Even as lakhs of people who lost their life’s savings in the Saradha scam await the outcome of the ongoing probe, the fraud cast its shadow on the Prime Minister’s Jan Dhan Yojana (PMGDY) which was launched on Thursday.
The ambitious programme of taking banking services to every household in the country was kicked off simultaneously in New Delhi by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and also in the various regions through the State Level Bankers Committees .
That the eastern region and its backward states made people an easy target of financial scamsters is well-known. The jingle created to popularise PMGDY exhorts people to come out of the folds of chit funds ( Ponzi schemes and all other multi level marketing and collective investment schemes are loosely referred to as chit funds) and open an account with a bank- which has now been vastly simplified.
Over 1.5 million depositors lost an estimated Rs 300 billion in the scam which felled not only the depositors but also the agents and the employees of the companies in which the Saradha group had ploughed in their money.
It has now been established that lack of adequate financial inclusion on the one-hand and dearth of employment opportunities had made the eastern region a happy- hunting ground for the scamsters. Of the 87 ponzi scheme running companies, 73 were from here.
Minority Affairs Minister Najma Heptullah who launched the programme organised by the city based United Bank, said that PMJDY emphasis was to reach households rather than villages, as was planned by the previous government.
