-The Business Standard Like Indira Gandhi, even Narendra Modi seems to be relying on directing public-sector banks through ministry of finance supported by party cadres. How new is that? Narendra Modi's biggest project so far is Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY), an aggressively promoted idea to open bank accounts. The English media ran full-page ads and TV commercials to announce the scheme that is supposed to reach largely rural households. It...

-The Business Standard Against NDA's 75 million target, UPA added 61 million in 2013-14 The government's financial inclusion scheme, Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana, is an empty shell at the moment. The government heralded its achievement of clocking 15 million new bank accounts under the scheme by Thursday and looked ahead to the target of achieving 75 million accounts by January 2015. In fact, given that the UPA government added an additional 60.9...

-The Hindu     Nearly three years after the government began experimenting with Aadhaar-based payments in Jharkhand, it has not been able to start disbursing payments to beneficiaries at their doorstep Jharkhand was one of five pilot States chosen for an Aadhaar-enabled payment system (AEPS). Beginning with Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) payments in select blocks in four districts in 2012, AEPS added pension and scholarship schemes and the Janani Suraksha...

-The Economic Times MUMBAI: Bank account holders can now send money to any individual through mobile banking by merely entering the recipient's Aadhaar number. National Payments Corporation of India, which launched Aadhaar-based remittances on Wednesday, sees its use in micro-payments such as taxi fares and small purchases. The transfers can be done using the most basic phones through SMS for small amounts or through mobile banking apps for amounts over Rs...

-The Economic Times The government's plan to make the Aadhaar number the centrepiece of the cash-transfer system is now facing opposition from a new quarter: banks. Several banks, led by the State Bank of India, have expressed reservation against jettisoning their current systems in favour of the platform created by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), which issues the Aadhaar number and wants to make it the basis to authenticate...