Financial inclusion: a tool for socio- economic development

Financial inclusion is one of the buzz-words in the development circles lately.It is also one of the major challenges throughout the world today and every government is taking different measures to make this dream come true. Various initiatives were taken up by Reserve Bank of India(RBI)/Government of India(GOI) like nationalization of banks, expansion of bank branch network, establishment & expansion of cooperative and Regional Rural Banks (RRBs), lead bank schemes, formation of Self Help Groups(SHGs), Micro Finance Institutions (MFIs) and Business correspondent model etc.in order to ensure financial inclusion. Besides all these initiativesas per census, 2011, out of 24.67 crore household in the country, only 14.48 crore (58.7%) households had access to organized banking services. To remove this disparity, government launched Pardhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojna(PMJDY)with the objective to ensure universal access to banking facility with at least one basic bank account for every household.Government has successfully opened more than 12.5crore bank account through various banks and mobilized more than INR10,000 crore deposits up to January, 2015. In this context, this paper is an attempt to study the current trends in financial inclusion in India with special reference to PMJDY.