Jan Dhan Yojana Turns a Big Hit in Davos

Davos: After making financial history and entering the Guinness World Records, the Narendra Modi government's financial inclusion scheme Jan Dhan Yojana is creating a big buzz in Davos, with the World Bank President and the Queen of Netherlands lauding India's efforts.

While Queen Maxima of Netherlands called on Finance Minister Arun Jaitley expressing the desire to study the scheme, power minister Piyush Goyal offered to send a team to the World Bank to help them get a better understanding of the scheme so that India's model can be replicated in other countries.

After her meeting with the finance minister, Queen Maxima told NDTV, "We talked about financial inclusion. It's great the way India has got people to bank."

Power and Coal Minister Piyush Goyal who attended a session with Queen Maxima of Netherlands and World Bank President Dr Jim Yong Kim told NDTV, "They were so excited about the fact that Prime Minister Modi could translate his vision into reality in such a short duration of time, in barely four months to be able to open over 10 crore accounts, reach out to nearly 99 per cent of the households in the country and 51 per cent of those account holders being women account holders left a deep impact."

Mr Goyal said they were "singing praises" of the Jan Dhan Yojana and they were looking at emulating that in other parts of the world. "I have even offered that we could send some of our officials associated with this program to assist the World Bank in achieving its mission of including everyone in the world in the financial framework by 2020," he said. "India has led the way very clearly for them. A laggard is today the leader."