At a time when the Jan Dhan Yojana, which aims to get India’s vast unbanked population into the formal economy, completes three years, the Narendra Modi government deserves a pat on the back for more reasons than one. The newly opened bank accounts of over 295 million beneficiaries have Rs 65,845 crore deposited. Of the total beneficiaries, as many as 230 million now have debit cards and are getting a taste of the digital economy for the first time in their lives. More than 170 million of these new bank account holders are in rural and semi-urban centres of India. The number of Jan Dhan bank account holders in states like Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Uttar Pradesh equals the population of Australia and Canada put together.
