Haryana cashless dream — miles to go

Sushil Manav

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, December 6

Efforts by the state government to make Haryana the first cashless state of the country notwithstanding, achieving digital economy is being considered a distance dream, particularly in rural and semi-urban areas of the state.

It is being said that when even the most developed countries could not adopt complete cashless transactions, expecting this to happen in a state like Haryana is not possible.

“Asking government departments to go cashless is one thing, but expecting people to adopt digital transactions for their daily routine will merely remain a dream. Even the developed nations were not cashless economies today. One cannot expect a daily wager, or a farmer or small shopkeepers in a village or a small town to switch over to digital payments,” said Dr Mahabir Jaglan, a professor in geography department of Kurukshetra University.

Dr Jaglan said a large majority of poor people, labourers and farmers did not have bank accounts even as they earn wages in the day and spend by the evening.

A bureaucrat who attended a meeting convened by the state government on cashless transactions on Monday said the main purpose of the din about the cashless society seemed to be a strategy to divert attention of people standing in queues.

“When educated people like me are not comfortable with the use of digital wallets or swipe of cards, it is too much to expect people to go cashless in a state where over 20 per cent people are illiterate,” he said.

The status of cashless transactions in the USA is 45 per cent, Australia 35 per cent, Japan 14 per cent, China 10 per cent and India 2 per cent so far.

The state government has launched a drive throughout the state to create awareness on cashless transactions among people and cash incentives have been announced traders and individuals adopting digital transactions.

Panchayats adopting digital payments are to be given ‘award of honour’ as per the state government’s announcement.

In a letter written to Deputy Commissioners, the NITI Aayog has announced cash incentive of Rs 10 for every individual who makes two successful transactions by Unified Payment Interface (UPI), *99# Banking, Aadhaar enabled payments, e-Wallets or RuPay, Debir and Credic cards.

The letter said the Aayog would transfer Rs 5 lakh each to all DCs for this purpose.

Similarly, cash incentives of Rs 100 per trader and Rs 5 per individual have been announced by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology for enrolling on the digital payment system.