PM Jan Dhan Yojana transformed financial inclusion but exposed challenges in account dormancy and last-mile banking access. Discuss.

Launched on 28 August 2014 as the National Mission for Financial Inclusion, PMJDY replaced a fragmented outreach model with universal, zero-balance banking. Twelve years on, it has decisively solved access, while usage and last-mile depth remain unfinished business.

Transformative gains in financial inclusion

• Scale: accounts rose from 14.72 crore (2015) to over 56.16 crore, holding deposits of about ₹2.67 lakh crore by August 2025 [1].
• Equity of reach: roughly 56% of accounts are held by women and about 67% lie in rural and semi-urban areas, banking historically excluded groups [1].
• Welfare architecture: PMJDY forms the account leg of the JAM trinity, enabling Direct Benefit Transfer across 327 schemes and curbing leakages and middlemen [1].
• Digitalisation: transactions grew from 2,338 crore (FY 2018-19) to 22,198 crore (FY 2024-25), aided by over 38 crore free RuPay cards [1]. The RBI Financial Inclusion Index reached 67.0 in March 2025, up 24.3% since 2021 [3].

Challenge of account dormancy

• Rapid account-opening targets produced duplicate and inoperative accounts, with incomplete re-KYC a recurring cause; the Department of Financial Services monitors inoperative accounts and has advised banks to contact holders to reactivate them rather than close them [2].
• Dormancy inflates inclusion statistics without translating into savings, credit or insurance uptake — the overdraft facility remains thinly used.

Last-mile banking access gaps

• Delivery leans heavily on a network of about 13.55 lakh Bank Mitras [3], whose viability is strained by thin commissions, cash-management burdens and patchy connectivity.
• Hilly, tribal and aspirational districts still face distance and digital-literacy barriers, limiting effective, not merely nominal, access.

PMJDY has thus shifted India's policy challenge from opening accounts to keeping them alive. Sustained re-KYC saturation drives, viable business-correspondent economics, financial literacy campaigns and credit linkage can convert dormant accounts into active financial citizenship — advancing SDG 8.10 and the constitutional promise of economic justice.