When natural or unnatural causes on an average cut short 36 lives every 24 hours last year alone in Odisha, the ambitious scheme of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to bring every citizen under insurance umbrella the Pradhan Mantri Jeevan Jyoti Yojana (PMJJY) that insures an individual of Rs2 lakh for any type of death and Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Yojana (PMSY) that insures one of Rs2 lakh accidental insurance is yet to attain the intended size and scale in the State.
According to data available with the State-level Bankers Committee (SlBC) here, over 5 million lives were insured under the schemes as on November 30, 2015 the last date for registration in the State.
Though, the average enrolments every day during the first three months were over 39,000, the number has risen to over 47,000 per day during the last three months, revealed the data. However, the intra-day enrolment in the country hovered at over 99,000 last year. This is so, when Odisha with a rate of 2 deaths every day owing to drowning alone figured among the top-15 States with maximum number of deaths due to drowning in the country. And, the affected households have no option of any compensation.
Interestingly, when the accounts opened under the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana in the State till November 30, 2015 had crossed over 8 million; the enrolment under the insurance schemes was around 5 million only – which reveals the existing gap in the potential and the actual enrolment attained in Odisha.
What is significant here is, such eligible populace stood excluded from the benefit of such schemes in the State for the simple reason of being unaware of such insurance schemes, a SlBC report has revealed.
Moreover, the report also indicated the lesser enrolment under the PMJJY, which provides insurance cover to even any death, to availability of lesser surplus amount at the hands of households in Odisha to pay the annual premium of Rs330 to maintain the policy.
However, the scheme of ‘Suraksha Bandhan’ launched by the Government last year to take care of unaffordable didn’t receive the hand-holding here, courtesy the obvious perception of one as an ‘NDA scheme’, quipped a senior SBI executive here. Interestingly, the scheme was tailored to overcome the hurdle by introducing gift schemes of ‘Suraksha’ and ‘Jeevan Suraksha’ deposit offers, where individuals could deposit cheques/cash of Rs5,001 for PMJJY and Rs201 for PMSY in the name of a beneficiary, and banks were directed by the Union Finance Ministry to initiate necessary actions to popularise the scheme.
“The lead district managers worked hard to bring the involvement of NGOs, SHGs, local MPs, MlAs and other public representatives like councillors or gram panchayat members to upscale the enrolment in the State, the response, however, especially from some SHGs and the local elected members was not enthusiastic as the schemes were being looked at through the ‘political’ prism,” observed the senior SBI executive.