Women are at the forefront of India’s current economic transformation. Empowering women is being seen as a way to maximize India’s demographic dividend and realize sustainable development goals. The Modi government since coming to power in 2014 has launched several schemes to provide an enabling environment for women-led growth be it through legal reforms to increase the scope of their rights or by undertaking crucial initiatives to increase their labor workforce participation and provide them social security benefits. One of the most significant impacts on the lives of Indian women has been achieved by improving their financial inclusion on a mission mode. About more than half of Jan Dhan Yojana Accounts are women beneficiaries. Apart from providing significant financial services to women, Jan Dhan Accounts have improved their access to various social goods.
If one may wonder how the opening of a zero-balance account has empowered women – the experience of Pushpa Devi is one of the stories to tell. Pushpa Devi is a simple rural woman, a resident of Madhupur Village in Bihar. The Jan Dhan Yojana (JDY) Account opened in her name empowered her to experience safe motherhood by providing her doorstep delivery assistance to enroll for institutional delivery care. She received cash assistance of Rs 1400 from the government directly into her Jan Dhan Account. However, at the time she was pregnant for the first time, she had no bank account in her name, requiring her to physically collect her cheque provided under the same scheme (Janani Suraksha Yojana), which she received with some delay. Back in 2013, nearly 90% of women beneficiaries of healthcare programs in the state were made to experience similar difficulties in getting their rightful cash assistance, as they had no bank account. Reasons behind women not having a bank account in their name were myriad from inherent bank biases to family gender stereotypes discouraging women from opening their bank accounts. This changed when in 2014 – the Modi government launched the Jan Dhan Yojana which sought to open bank accounts without any minimum balance requirement on a mission mode. Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi himself appealed to people to participate in Jan Dhan Yojana in huge numbers to make it successful.
At present, more than 52 crore Jan Dhan Accounts have been opened, the majority of which belong to women. Before 2014, poor people were often neglected and social security benefits hardly reached them. Poor and disadvantaged women especially suffered tremendously from the lack of bank accounts in their name, a situation that changed significantly after the Jan Dhan Yojana launch. Jan Dhan Accounts has not just reduced the delays and eliminated difficulties but has also left no scope for corruption to happen. Before 2014, when nearly 90 percent of women beneficiaries of healthcare programs had no bank account in the State of Bihar, corruption in the implementation of Janani Suraksha Yojana was rampant and shameful. A CAG Report noted that between 2005-08, about 32,575 beneficiaries of the JSY scheme in Bihar did not even receive any payment against their registration. This was not just the story of plight only for women in Bihar but of the majority of females across India. In Uttar Pradesh – a neighboring state of Bihar, about 93.7% of beneficiaries of Janani Suraksha Yojana did not receive cash incentives between 2006-07 under the scheme, perpetuating poor health outcomes among women. But today, for women like Pushpa Devi, the Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) of Janani Suraksha Yojana in Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana Bank accounts has now restored their confidence and trust in government policies.