There have been some recent reports of malpractices related to Jan Dhan accounts. In this context, it might be interesting to know the grassroots-level challenges affecting financial inclusion. In India, where nearly a quarter of the population is illiterate and below the poverty line, ensuring financial inclusion is a challenge. The two indicators, poverty and illiteracy, vary widely across different states in India. Rural poverty exceeds 30% of the population in places like Assam, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Orissa, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Manipur. Rural poverty can be attributed to lower agricultural income, lack of sustainable livelihoods, lack of skills, underemployment and unemployment. Therefore, securing deposit operations on these accounts is a challenge. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get Original Essay India has a literacy rate of 73% with some states like Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan where the literacy rate varies between 62% and 70%. Banks have devised ways to address limitations arising from illiteracy by granting biometric access to bank accounts. However, Aadhaar seeding means that some numbers still need to be entered into the machine to manage an account. Since all the numbers are in English, only the banker or business correspondent (BC) can enter the Aadhaar number. Similarly, the messages that arrive on cell phones from banks are also in English and therefore the illiterate must seek someone's help to understand and interpret the message. In each of the above cases, the privacy of an individual's bank balance is violated. This makes the illiterate and the homebound population – women and the elderly – vulnerable to unfair practices. There are also anecdotes that enterprising BCs, to ensure ease of doing business, give the same Personal Identification Number (PIN) to all residents of a single village. This may further compromise privacy and cause embarrassment for authorities when direct benefit transfers via bank accounts are implemented on a larger scale. Therefore, it is necessary to carefully develop a financial inclusion strategy sensitive to regional, demographic and gender factors. Furthermore, it is necessary to consider why, despite extensive efforts by the authorities, the Prime Minister's Jan Dhan Accounts (PMJDA) have underperformed. This could be due, in addition to poverty and illiteracy, to the type of products offered to the unbanked population. As an illustration, recurring deposits are products more suited to the dependent income group rather than people in the informal sector whose incomes are uncertain, seasonal and unplanned. At the opening of the PMJDA, mainly public sector banks (PSBs) rose to the occasion to ensure that every unbanked household had a bank account. Now that 25 million PMJDAs have been opened in the last two years, an unprecedented feat in the history of financial inclusion, it must be considered whether it is also the responsibility of PSBs to ensure that these are operational. Opening the PMJDA was a mammoth task, as in March 2014, just before the PMJDA, the total accounts on the books of commercial banks were around 1 lakh crore. As one might imagine, given the limited resources in the banking sector, opening such a large number of PMJDAs in 24 months in remote areas has diverted bankers' attention from their core business of mobilizing resources and lending to reliable borrowers. The next challenge is.