Based on a recent survey conducted under the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana, the govt made a tall claim.
Report Card of Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana : More than 26 crore bank accounts opened covering 99.99% households – Banking the unbanked. pic.twitter.com/mNDDsNF2mu
— BJP (@BJP4India) January 2, 2017
The BJP on Jan 2 tweeted saying: “More than 26 crore bank accounts opened covering 99.99% households – Banking the unbanked.” But the survey left out a crucial 14% or 35 million households, seriously undermining the finding.
Census 2011 listed 24.67 crore households, or 246.7 million. Of these, 41% (10.18 crore or 101.8 million) did not have access to banking, according to data on household amenities under the census survey.
That leaves 3.5 crore (35 million) or 14% of households, many of which may not have members with bank accounts. Also, there were more than 19.19 crore (191.9 million) households in India in 2001, increasing by 5.5 crore (55 million) or 28% between 2001 and 2011, according to census data. Since 2011, these households have further increased, but they are not counted by census officials.
The government has not specified the methodology it used to calculate households with bank accounts and whether it accounted for the increase in households since the 2011 census. So, the claim that 99.99% of Indian households have access to banking appears to lack a statistical foundation.
