Globally India is currently known as an agriculture superpower throughout the world. In fact, 58 % of the Indian Population is actually employed in the farming or agriculture sector out of which 80 % actually are small and marginal farmers.
However Agriculture sector only contributes to 20 % of the Indian GDP, this itself shows the lack of financial inclusions of a lot of small and marginal farmers in the economic side of things.
This was the very reason that Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana was launched to help farmers and other people with low income to include themselves seamlessly in the Indian Economy. This also was a ploy to help educate and help in shrinking the Digital divide by helping the Farmers to be trained in how to use money or bank accounts.
Launch of PM Jan Dhan Yojana
Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana actually began on 28th August 2014 and since its beginning, it has actually reduced the number of villages with no access to bank accounts in a 5 km radius to just 256. The government has also supplied these bank accounts with a total of 146230 crore rupees ever since its conceptions, it is also deeply interlinked with Schemes like the Atal pension scheme, PM Jeevan Jyoti Yojana which offers pension to people, and helps them gain insurance for an annual insurance charge of Rs 330. So the pension that needs to be deposited and the insurance charge that needs to be deducted is all deposited and deducted from this very same zero balance account made specifically for people with low-income wages which of course includes a lot of small and marginal farmers.
According to finance professional and industry expert, Devshree Shukla, Government schemes like the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana actually created a platform for the farmers to take initiative and go to the banks in order to get their accounts opened, this also helped them to understand and put to use credit facilities like the Kisan Credit Card Schemes which was impossible earlier when they didn’t have any card facility available to them.
During Covid 19 to help households the Government deposited Rs. 500 per month into Woman Jan Dhan bank accounts which totaled over to an amount of 30,945 crores rupees in August 2021. Currently, all over India, 43.4 crores bank accounts have been opened ever since this scheme's conception and 85 % of these accounts are active.
The timely deposition of money directly into these accounts made specifically for small and marginal farmers have actually removed a lot of middlemen thereby making sure that the money from various schemes actually is deposited in their account. It has also helped a lot of farmers to tide over the difficult time of Covid-19 by ensuring that the money from various schemes like the PM Kisan Samman Nidhi etc directly reaches their account instead of being lost in transit.
