10 years on, rural India takes the lead in Jan Dhan accounts; more rural accounts opened post Covid

10 years on, rural India takes the lead in Jan Dhan accounts; more rural accounts opened post Covid

The government’s flagship scheme Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana has hit near saturation across states with over 530 million accounts being opened over the last decade, but a Moneycontrol analysis shows that the account creation has kept pace in rural areas post Covid.

While the government added 72 million accounts in rural areas between 2015-2019 at a compounded annual growth rate of 10.6 percent, it nearly doubled its account addition to 137 million with a growth of 10.3 percent per annum between 2019 and 2024.

Most of this addition came from public sector banks, which added 100 million of the 137 million Jan Dhan, while private sector’s contribution has dipped significantly, having added only 469,486 accounts over the last five years.

In urban areas, the pace of account creation has slowed significantly.

Over 165 million total beneficiaries were added to the scheme between 2019 and 2024, 82.7 percent came from rural areas. Rural centres had a 55 percent share in account additions between 2019-2024.

A large reason for this could also be a shift to direct benefit transfer scheme, which has given a fillip to people opting for Jan Dhan accounts, especially after Covid.

Number of beneficiaries receiving cash transfers rose to 980 million in FY21 as compared to 590 million in FY19 — a 66 percent increase — and 220 million in FY15.

Amount transferred under DBT scheme for various social security programmes went up 75 percent to Rs 2.97 lakh crore in FY21 from Rs 1.7 lakh crore and almost 663 percent higher than Rs 38,926 crore disbursed in cash via DBT scheme.

In FY24, the government transferred Rs 2.92 lakh crore to 712 million beneficiaries under DBT scheme.