Jan Dhan at 12: Banking India's Unbanked

Synopsis

As per the data provided by the Finance Ministry, the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana, which was started on August 28, 2014, has completed 12 years with the number of accounts reaching 59.09 crore and deposits crossing ₹3.17 lakh crore. More than half of the accounts are owned by women, almost 78 per cent of which are in rural and semi urban India. This article explores the development of the scheme, its contributions to welfare provision and the remaining weaknesses in the scheme.

A 10-year wager on bank accounts.

The Prime Minister Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) was introduced by the Prime Minister on August 15, 2014 on the Red Fort and formally opened up on August 28, 2014, as “bank the unbanked, secure the unsecured, fund the unfunded”.

The numbers here indicate framing has been generally stable for 12 years. As of August 19, 2026, the number of PMJDY accounts had swelled to 59.09 crore and deposits in the accounts crossed ₹3.17 lakh crore, according to the Finance Ministry.

Needless to say, 59 crore accounts is about four times the population of the United States. According to the scheme's own comparative data, deposits have increased to the current level from ₹15,670 crore in March 2015, which is between 12 and 20 times higher, depending on which base year is used to compare with the figures.

From Empty Accounts to Active Savings

One of the issues that critics of PMJDY during its infancy cited, not without reason, was the leak of accounts without any transactions. As reported by Business Standard in December 2016, the Jan Dhan accounts who had zero balance accounted for approximately 23 per cent of the accounts and deposits into these accounts were surging even after demonetisation, but net deposits were decelerating rapidly after the initial wave.

The data compilation of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha for 2019 revealed that the proportion of inoperative accounts – those with no transactions for two consecutive years – had in fact increased from 19.9 per cent in 2017 to 23.3 per cent in 2018.

That's not the case anymore. Financial Services Secretary Vivek Joshi told reporters that zero-balance accounts had dropped to 8 per cent of the total from 58 per cent in March 2015, while the average deposits had increased to ₹4,063 from ₹1,065 in the same period in August 2023.

This is furthered by the latest data released by the Finance Ministry, which shows that the average deposit made per account was ₹5,356 on 19 August 2026, a 3.4-fold rise in 12 years. On the occasion, Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary emphasized that the success of the scheme is not just about the number of accounts opened, but in how it has changed the country's banking and financial landscape.

The King's Managers of Finance

The government has focused on the demography of PMJDY accounts to highlight the scheme's achievements. Till August 2026, 55.7 per cent (32.92 crore) of the PMJDY holders were women and 77.8 per cent (45.95 crore) of the accounts were in rural and semi-urban India.

The rural and gender focus is important for a scheme whose initial intent was to reach people who were excluded from formal banking services, and not for urban populations where the majority had accounts by 2014.

The JAM Trinity and Welfare Delivery explores the role of the Trinity in the context of welfare delivery

The importance of PMJDY is not just about the number of deposits, but also one of the three strings of what government policy makers refer to as Jan Dhan, Aadhaar, and Mobile. This approach has contributed to the direct transfer of welfare payments to beneficiaries' bank accounts, thereby minimising delays and intermediaries in the distribution of welfare payments from the government, the Finance Ministry states.

A bank account set up with a mobile number and a biometric identity cuts out several points where cash might leak away from a household, which has been a long-standing concern with the system of using local intermediaries to transfer cash.

The finance ministry factsheet issued in June 2026 were quite unequivocal about the scheme, stating that the opening of these accounts in rural areas was the biggest financial inclusion exercise in the world.

That is the assertion of the scheme's own designers, not a third-party verdict, and readers need to take that into account — but when it comes to raw account numbers, the scheme is not that much different from few schemes around the world, as those can be verified through Reserve Bank of India and Finance Ministry disclosures.

Growth Momentum Through 2026

There is no significant decline in the rate of account addition. According to BLS E-Services, a business correspondent network engaged in last-mile account servicing, the accounts increased from 52.01 crore in 2024 to 55.28 to 58.06 crore a year later, deposits went up from ₹2.34 lakh crore in April 2024 to ₹2.62 lakh crore in April 2025 before touching the ₹3 lakh crore mark.

Business correspondent networks (BCNs) — agents that provide banking services where there isn't a physical bank branch — have been an unobtrusive, but vital component of this expansion in regions where it is not economically viable for banks to establish a full-service branch.

The numbers do not tell the full story

For all the scale, the PMJDY data does not provide answers to a more challenging question: how many account holders are using the account for their savings, credit needs, or to take out insurance, rather than transferring money into it once a year and then leaving it dormant?

The government's own emphasis has changed from counts of new accounts to average balances and usage based on the latter years of the scheme, indicating that this distinction is one that the government is making for itself.

The more rigorous way of testing usage patterns, apart from the ministry's own numbers, is through independent audits carried out by bodies like the Comptroller and Auditor General as well as the RBI financial inclusion surveys.

Conclusion

A decade and a half since its inception, Jan Dhan Yojana is no longer a media stunt to open an account, but an infrastructure, supporting a lot of welfare and payments in the Indian context. The account numbers, the growth of deposits and the reduction in the share of zero-balances all indicate that this scheme is developed, and not simply growing. Its ability to bridge that divide between having a bank account and using it productively is still up for debate for its next step.