As the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana completed 10 years, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday said the scheme personifies dignity, empowerment and the opportunity to participate in the economic life of the Nation.

Modi also hailed those who worked to make the Jan Dhan Yojana a success, and said the scheme has been paramount in boosting financial inclusion.

“Today, we mark a momentous occasion - #10YearsOfJanDhan. Congratulations to all the beneficiaries and compliments to all those who worked to make this scheme a success,” the Prime Minister said in a social media post.

The Jan Dhan Yojana has been paramount in boosting financial inclusion and giving dignity to crores of people, especially women, youth, and the marginalised communities, he said.

Later, on a Linkedin post, Modi said today marks a decade since the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana was launched and for him, this initiative was more than just a policy it was an endeavour to build an India where each and every citizen, irrespective of one’s economic background, has access to the formal banking apparatus.

“Many of you, especially the youth, would be thinking -- why does this matter so much? After all, in this age, having a bank account would be very basic and even taken for granted. However, when we assumed office in 2014, the situation was very different. It was almost 65 years since Independence, but access to banking was a distant dream for almost half of our households,” the Prime Minister said. Theirs was a world where savings were kept at home, vulnerable to loss and theft, he noted. “Access to credit was often at the mercy of predatory lenders. The absence of financial security held back so many dreams,” Modi said.

“This problem becomes even more ironical considering the fact that four and a half decades ago, banks were nationalised by the then (Congress) Government and that too in the name of the poor! Yet, the poor never got access to banking,” he said.

“When the Jan Dhan Yojana was rolled out, I remember the scepticism that surrounded it too. Some people asked -- could it really be possible to bring such a large number of people into the banking system? Will this effort lead to any concrete changes? Yes. The scale of the challenge was enormous, but so was the determination of the people of India to ensure it becomes a reality,” he said.

The success of the Jan Dhan Yojana has two parts to it, Modi pointed out and said one is in the numbers with over 53 crore people who never imagined they would enter a bank having bank accounts now. These accounts have a deposit balance of over Rs. 2.3 lakh crore, he said.