India's Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) has successfully enrolled over 560 million individuals since 2014. Yet, this landmark achievement masks a central contradiction: parliamentary data from December 2025 reveals that nearly one in four accounts approximately 150 million are classified as inoperative, having witnessed no customer-initiated transactions for over two years. This paper dissects this "inclusion paradox" the critical chasm between account opening and sustained usage.

Drawing on official government data disclosed in parliamentary responses (Lok Sabha, August & December 2025) and behavioural evidence from the World Bank Global Findex 2025, we provide a comprehensive empirical analysis of PMJDY dormancy. Our investigation yields three principal findings. First, dormancy exhibits significant geographic heterogeneity, ranging from 14% in Maharashtra to 39% in Goa. This stark variation suggests that poverty alone is an insufficient explanation; state-level implementation and local factors are critical determinants. Second, while gender-disaggregated dormancy data is not centrally maintained, intersecting evidence that 67% of accounts are in rural areas and 55.7% are held by women, combined with Global Findex data on gendered barriers strongly suggests that rural women are disproportionately vulnerable to exclusion through dormancy. Third, temporal trend analysis reveals a correlation between declining Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) inflows (from ₹7.16 trillion in FY23 to ₹6.89 trillion in FY25) and a concurrent rise in dormancy rates (from 21% to 26% in public sector banks), exposing a model of "fragile inclusion" dependent on external stimulus.