Awareness of Atal Pension Yojana among College Students

Abstract

In India, the Government has laid out the Atal Pension Yojana (APY), which will give great benefits, contingent upon the commitment to the scheme, at retirement or reaching 60. The Atal Pension Yojana launched by the Prime Minister of India Mr. Narendra Modi in 2015 to replace and improve upon the previous government's Swavalamban Yojana, which wasn't popular among the targeted population. Atal Pension Yojana (APY), is a guaranteed income as pension scheme for workers employed in mostly unorganized sector and informal sector. The motive of the study is to determine the awareness of Atal Pension Yojana among the college students. The study used a quantitative research approach and a descriptive research design to investigate college students' awareness of the Atal Pension Yojana in Tamil Nadu. A survey was carried out to gather the primary data using a questionnaire and a simple random sample procedure (Google form). The survey's sample size is approximately 300 students from different colleges across Tamil Nadu. The scheme aims to incentivize saving especially within the unorganized workforce so as to make them financially independent at retirement by providing them with a pension based on their contribution to the scheme. The scheme is also intended to act as a gateway to financial inclusion of people who till recently were not a part of the formal banking system. This study intends to bring the insight about Atal Pension Yojana and also further tries to judge the awareness level and attitude towards the scheme among college students.