World Bank (2008)[1] in a survey explains that impoverished and micro businessmen have to depend upon the informal sources because of truancy of the inclusive formal financial system and have to invest in opportunities which are timely and easily accessible despite the fact that they have to tolerate much higher interest burden in such informal sources. The report elaborates that financial inclusion can encourage eradication of the obstacles and achieving financial inclusion in India, with heterogeneous remarkable segments in rural and unorganised sectors but it requires a high level of penetration by the formal financial system.

Kochaar (2009)[2] has investigated that to promote economic growth, there is a need to go onwards from opening account, regular savings and to enable to approach for loans on normal basis for which banks should erect awareness about financial products and services and facing the problem of financial exclusion with integrative approach in which specific strategies would help banks to reach out the financial untouched segment of the society. In this regard, banks facilities should give extensive exposure to the no frills accounts etc. to make entry of financial excluded region into financial inclusion through use of the technological advancement and make bank premises easy approachable and banks related Electronic Machines (ATMs Machine) user friendly for the people who are still unaware about technology.

Balaji’s study (2014)[3] examines the assess and level of financial inclusion among selected tribal communities, their level of awareness about no frills account and the financial services offered by the banks and the steps taken by the banks towards financial inclusion. The scholar recommends that for villagers financial inclusion and infrastructure should go hand in hand for all round tribal development to take place so as to ensure that villagers have access to health education, shelter, information, technology and insurances apart from credit behaviour.

Shabna (2014)[4] investigated the level of awareness about financial inclusion forces and examined the extent of financial inclusion among below poverty line people in households of Kerala in terms of continuous usage and access of bank account. The scholar finds that the literacy level and occupation highly influence access and continuous usage of bank account. Further BPL households access bank account only for enjoying the government benefits and schemes and are to a certain extent aware about financial inclusion drives as majority are fully aware of no-frill accounts.

Sinha & Azad, (2018)[5] examined The Jan Dhan Yojana of financial inclusion programme where they appreciate the increase in accounts because of PMJDY, but doubt that many of these accounts are duplicate, that is, opened by people who already have bank accounts. The operative status of the accounts has been felt mostly remaining dormant. More over regarding the access to credit from formal sources, the post launch period of the scheme according to them has not shown any increase in the credit-deposit ratio and in the share of small loans. Fraudulent use of PMJDY accounts is also apprehended by the authors. They have raised concern on the ability to use and operate bank accounts which challenge the claims of financial inclusion. They stated that the PMJDY scheme in its current form is inadequate to address the problem of financial exclusion.

Peterson and Rachid (2022)[6] demonstrated that there has been increasing access to financial services and products provided by financial institutions, which improves financial intermediation and results in positive economic growth via which financial inclusion promotes economic growth. They suggest that policy environment should be favourable for financial participation and economic expansion which is also a priority according to the policy makers. They argued that there may be a positive welfare impact from the relationship between financial inclusion and economic growth. This is because significant levels of financial inclusion would make finance accessible to all members of society, regardless of income level, giving people the chance to use the services to improve their welfare and fostering greater social inclusion.

The research was undertaken on the basis of the primary data collected from 480 respondents including 98 nomadic and 382 non-nomadic tribal communities (Gaddis and Gujjars) based  the multi stage random sampling method. Data was taken from six blocks of Kangra district in Himachal Pradesh.

The responses are analyzed and discussed as below:

1. Awareness about Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana

Government of India has launched Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana with the motive to include more andmore number of people in the process of financial inclusion through opening bank accounts. The scheme is to provide the opportunity to such strata of the society who are not much natient about investment benefits are  unable to invest due to cumbersome procedures and conditions of investment. The policy includes services like opening of bank account, insurance facility, credit facility and pension benefits at affordable access. Through the policy, the conditional barriers have been tried to be broken and eased to ensure access of financial inclusion of such communities who have very limited sources. To propagate the policy, widespread institutional involvement has been assigned the responsibility through financial institutions as well as the government bodies. The reaction of the respondents with regard to awareness about Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana is depicted in the following table 1.

Table 1Awareness about  Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana

The responses reveal that 67.9 percent of the respondents are not aware about Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Policy which is a government program despite of the fact that it is characterized by the features of access to bank at minimum rate or open bank account with zero balance. This indicates that the organizations involved in propagating about the Programme in the community could-not successfully accomplish their goal especially when the communities of gaddis and Gujjars of Himachal Pradesh are talked about. 

2.   Responses Regarding Benefits of Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana

Out of 480 respondents, only 154 have revealed that they are aware about Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana. Amongst 154 respondents who are aware about the scheme, great majority is of the opinion that it is not beneficial. It is worth to mention that under the scheme, facilities like use of Ru-Pay card, Insurance and Pension Benefits are provided. Further, the users can avail overdraft facility. As per the responses of the informants of the present research, the benefits of the scheme being felt by the people of Gaddi and Gujjar communities are analyzed as under:

Table 2   Responses Regarding Benefits of Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana

According to the respondents of the present research, since the percentage of respondents who are aware about the scheme is only 32.1, out of them more than 90 percent are not availing the overdraft facility. The responses reveal that two-third of them (103 respondents) are using Ru-Pay. On the other hand, 43.5 percent stated that they are availing insurance facility and only 29.2 percent are getting pension benefits. Therefore, it can be implied that the popularity and usage of Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana amongst gaddis and gujjars in Himachal Pradesh is very low (Table 2).

3.   Analysis of Awareness about Benefits of Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (KMO and Bartlett's Test Anaysis)

To testify the awareness level about the benefits of Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana for the chosen communities of gaddis and gujjars in Himachal Pradesh, by applying KMO and Bartlett’s Test Analysis, the results are as under (Table 3):

Table 3  Analysis of Awareness about Benefits of Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana

The above table of KMO and Bartlett’s test output analyzes whether the responses given are adequate with the data collected or not. Since the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) value obtained is 0.766 and if this value is compared with the of KMO value interpretation criteria, it is very clear that value of KMO i.e. .766 is more than reasonable value level. This means that the sum of partial correlation is not large in comparison to the sum of correlation. The sum of analysis variable is 76.6% which indicates that there is no diffusion in the correlation pattern. Hence, the factor analysis is appropriate for this data. The above table also shows the Bartlett’s test of sphericity. The approx. Chi-square value obtained is 797.513 and the significance value P of the Bartlett’s test of sphericity which is .000 is less than .005 which reveals that correlation matrix is not an identity matrix. This indicates that the variables are strongly related with each other and factor analysis is applicable for this data.