In January 2015, a remarkable thing happened in India that more than one crore eighty lakh bank accounts were opened across the country within a week, this feat was also recognised by the Guinness World Records.
This didn’t happen in a big-city alone, but across small towns and remote villages, where families who had never possessed a bank account gained access to banking for the first time. That January week-long drive is now popularly known as Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana, or simply PM-JDY.
A large number of those who opened accounts had no prior experience of dealing with banks; they had never owned a debit card, and never had a place to keep money safe other than at home.
Since then this drive has grown into a nationwide movement that has assisted the lives of hundreds of millions of Indians.
The trajectory of PM-JDY
As of August this year, the number of PM-JDY accounts across the country stands at 59.09 crore, this number was recorded to be 14.72 crore in 2015.
The numbers have gone four times. Of these bank accounts, nearly 46 crore belong to people in rural and semi-urban areas, the places where access to banks was hardest to come by.
As per the official records, around 33 crore of the account holders are reportedly women, a number that has kept rising year after year.
When the scheme started, at that time the goal was deemed to give every household a bank account. A few years later, in 2018, that goal grew bigger.
Today, the aim of this programme goes beyond focusing on household, but every adult who did not yet have a bank account.
This shift meant more people, especially women and workers in informal jobs, could open an account in their own name, not just through the head of the family.
Opening the account is only the beginning of what the scheme offers.
Other benefits of this scheme
According to this scheme, every account holder gets a RuPay debit card, which works at ATMs and shops across the country. So far more than 41 crore such cards have been given out.
Along with the card comes accident insurance, worth up to two lakh rupees for accounts opened after August 2018, and the account holder does not pay anything for this cover.
After six months of regular use, account holders can also apply for an overdraft of up to ten thousand rupees, giving a small cushion of credit to families who may never have had access to a loan before.
The scheme also acts as a window to other government support. Money meant for pensions, subsidies, and welfare payments reaches people directly through these accounts, cutting out delays and middlemen.
Account holders can also join pension and insurance schemes such as the Atal Pension Yojana, the Pradhan Mantri Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana, and the Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Bima Yojana, all built around the same bank account.
Money in these accounts has grown too, and grown fast. Deposits have gone from about fifteen thousand crore rupees in 2015 to over three lakh sixteen thousand crore rupees in 2026.
This tells us something beyond numbers on a balance sheet. It tells us that people are saving more, trusting banks more, and relying less on cash kept at home or informal moneylenders.
India’s Financial Inclusion Index, a measure of how well people across the country can access banking, credit, insurance, and digital payments, has moved from 53.9 in 2018 to 67 in 2026.
Global institutions like the IMF and the World Bank have also spoken about the role PM-JDY has played in this change.
What began as a week of opening accounts has turned into a permanent shift in how India banks.
A scheme that started with a simple idea, that every family deserves a place to keep their money safe, has grown into a wide network of savings, credit, insurance, and pensions reaching the parts of the country that needed it most.
Twelve years is a long time in the life of any government programme, but for the person who opened their first account in that record-breaking week in 2015, it has been the start of something that continues to shape how they save, borrow, and plan for the future.
