1. The Zamaindari (Zamin = Land ZaminDar = Big Land Owner ZaminDari = A system of exploitation set-up by British now dismantled.) system is over. Period. There are some big land wonders left but I am not going into it. 2. Poor borrow from money lenders who may or may not be big land owners. But in almost all the cases these money lenders are local muscle men, like everywhere else in the world. This is how parallel money lending works all over the world. The local moneylender lends money. Charges exorbitant rates. In case of non payment the life is made hell for the debtor. In many cases the debtor borrows money and spends it on gambling and alcohol and ends up loosing all his wealth to the money lender. BTW the money lender also accepts deposits. But they don't usually pay interest on the deposits. Many times these deposits work in an interesting way - what is called a "committee" in some parts of the country. Lets say there are 1000 contributors in the "committee" each depositing Rs 500 every month. Let's say duration of the committee is 2 years. Each month a lottery is conducted with one winner. The winner gets Rs 24 x 500 = 12,000 and stops contributing. The remaining members keep contributing. At the end of 24 months each remaining member gets 12,000 each. If a member misses a payment his/her contribution till date is forfeited. These moneylenders also accept deposits for safekeeping. Usually no interest is paid. Government's scheme plans to break this. 3. Government owned banks lend billions of Rupees every year to poor farmers and other economically/socially weaker sections. These loans were usually waived off by the Central (Federal) government. Populism over economics. 4. Opening of bank accounts is first step towards financial inclusion. 5. The number 15 million should be taken with a pinch of salt. Some banks like Bank Of Baroda were opening zero balance accounts and many who already had accounts opened another one with such banks. Branches were given targets and many opened accounts for family and friends who already had bank accounts.

You are forgetting people are being saved from the clutches of money lenders which have enslaved these people for a long time now. Now the poor have the opportunity to get a loan from the bank and a real insurance cover. This change can not be trivialized.

1. Banks were inaccessible to poor people. Too much paper work. Too far away. Too difficult to conduct business. I hope with new bank accounts all these are changing too.

2. Saving is not new. People save money; even poor people do save. But, then, if the savings are in women's hands, it is spent more wisely. Historically, the only way women could store the money was in gold. Eventually, gold itself because such a coveted possession, it's monetary value was not exploited for capital needs. Bank accounts may not have these problems.

3. Historically, the only reason rural folks went to bank is to take loans, under some government project. And, that had a big potential for corruption. People had to pay money to take the loans. The funny thing was the underlying assumption is that the borrowers need not pay money back, since the government will write it off, for some election purposes.

4. Money transfers for poor is new. I think that would work lot better. And, perhaps giving to women would make it work whole lot better. In my observation, there is lot of social and cultural conditioning in seeing the kids doing better than the parents, the mothers will try to put the money to use. Whether they have the financial education or not, different issue.

5. Any system will be exploited over time. I think it is important to shake them up every few years to disturb the existing power structures, especially in the relationship between the government and the people.