What is Atal Pension Yojana? Know more about it

About The Atal Pension Yojana:-

The government scheme Atal Pension Yojana was launched on 9 May 2015 in Kolkata by the prime minister of our country Shree Narendra Modi. The key people who played big role in the implementation and formation of the scheme were Nirmala Sitharaman who is an economist and politician in BJP and Arun Jaitley who is an Indian politician. The scheme is a little similar with the previously launch scheme that is Swavalamban Yojana which was a government scheme which was with the objective to provide pensions to retired people belonging to Unorganized sector. To get the benefit of this scheme it was important to first register yourself with NPS which is National Pension Scheme. The act which was for the administer of this scheme was Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority Act which was implemented in 2013.

Aims and Objectives of the scheme:-

You might be interested to know about what this scheme was meant to do?

There are many reasons to make and implement this scheme which took a significant amount of budget too. Here are some of the aims and objectives of launching the Atal Pension Yojana Scheme written below:-

1. Sense of security:- The main objective of launching this scheme was to give a sense of security to people who are in occupations of Unorganized sector like House help, gardeners and delivery folks etc. Now these people have no need to worry about any such serious circumstances like illness, accident and diseases etc.
2. Reducing fear:- The people who work in this sector always have a sense of fear that what will happen to them when they will become old and this scheme have this objective of reducing their fear and giving them a safe and secure backup.
3. Supporting old age people:- If there were no scheme like this, it would be difficult to maintain the daily life expenditure of home, when we provide those a pension who passed the age of working, they can also maintain a simple standard of living and a monthly flow of money which can be enough to live in an old age after fulfilling all the familial responsibilities.
4. Women Empowerment:- It has been noted that there was an active participation of women in subscribing this scheme which was a very beneficial for women to be financial independent and taking care of their family and participate in their development and raising standards of living. These schemes promotes women to do something to earn and increase their participation in the economy of our country.

Progress made under this scheme:-

Here below are some factual information regarding how people are subscribing this scheme which shows how well these scheme have been implemented in the all parts of our country. All these information is according to the research by the body:- Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority. These progress are:-

1. There is an increase in number of subscriber who are in a young age. For an example:- Between 18 to 20 years of age of 2017 was 4.66 lakhs and in the year 2022 there are 66.87. According to percentage there were 71.0 percentage of subscribers in year 2016 and in year 2022 the percentage is 56.0%. who were belonging to the age of 26 to 40 years old. There were 29.0% of subscribers in the year 2016 and then in year 2022, it rose to 44.0% who were belonging of the age of 18 to 25 years old.
2. Most of the subscribers have selected the lowest pension slab which is of 1000 rupees 24.7 lakhs of people in 2017 which was increased to 320 lakhs of people in 2022. The second largest selected pension slab was of 5000 rupees which was 17.32 Lakhs in Financial Year of 2017 and in the Financial Year of 2022, it rose to 51.62 lakhs.
3. The above average coverage of this scheme implementation in number of subscribers terms are of states like Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Himanchal Pradesh, West Bengal, Karnataka, Punjab and Tamil Nadu and the lower average coverage of states like Delhi, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Jammu and Kashmir and Rajasthan.
4. In 2017, female participation to subscribe in this scheme was 18.37 lakhs in Financial Year 2017 and in 2022 this scheme was subscribed by 178 lakhs women. This shows how well the women participation is going in our country under the Atal Pension Yojana Scheme.
5. Subscribers of this scheme of Atal Pension Yojana who were enrolled in total (Including all) number of banks were 24.85 Lakhs in financial year of 2016 which rose to 401.27 Lakhs in the financial year of 2022.  

How it is going?

There might be questions about how this Atal Pension Yojana Scheme is going and what good reforms have taken place in this scheme. Here are some of the initiatives taken by the government. Here are some of these below. These are some of the measures suggested by Anurag Singh Thakur:-

1. Removed the Mandatory monthly schedule payment and making it more flexible with time.
2. They are now free to upgrade and downgrade their pension at any time of the financial year.
3. They have made an application to increase the number of participations by subscribers and common people. Digitalizing the whole system to make it more convenient and easy for the common public and more involvement of technology in daily life of people.

Way forward:-

1. Such schemes for the unorganized sector is very much important what is important to make people more aware of such schemes so that they can participate more. The implementation of such schemes are very important on ground level.
2. More transparency should be there so that it can be more appropriate which can be done through proper digitalization. More involvement of Technology is a good thing to consider for a revolutionary growth.
3. Proper training to people who are in the implementation team of this scheme. And as suggested, it should be more flexible in nature.