How to make India ‘Cashless India’ ?
INTRODUCTION
In order to curb the circulation of fake currency notes and black money, the honorable PM of India, Mr. Narendra Modi abruptly announced in the beginning of the second week of November, 2016 that the scrapping of Rs.500 and Rs.1,000 notes is to be taken place in India in no time. The schemes “Make In India” and “Digital India” were the two other successful schemes launched by the Modi government during 2014 and 2015 respectively. Soon after a few days of implementation of the demonetization scheme by the government, Mr. Narendra Modi came out with a new scheme of making India a cashless country for the addressing the same issues.
How to make India ‘Cashless India’ ?
BARRIERS IN THE WAY OF MAKING INDIA A CASHLESS NATION
There some hindrances that need to be taken care of to make India’s economy a cashless one. Let us have look at some of the issues that the government of the country needs to address to make India go cashless.
1) About one-fifth of India’s population is under the BPL and they lack adequate access to the basic necessities. Carrying out cashless transactions is too hi fi, a thing to be expected from them.
2) Too much paper work goes on in any government office like Passport office, Income Tax department, post office, etc. People working in those places are unwilling to work with modern technologies.
3)There is no electrification in many villages in India. Without electrification, how can one have access to the internet. If one has no connectivity with the world wide web, there is no scope to carry out a cash-less transaction.
4) E-wallets of several e-commerce entities provide customers with cash back facilities on making purchases. Promotion of e-wallets like M-pesa ,Paytm wallet, etc is yet to be carried out on a mass scale.
5) Payments through debit cards, credit cards, internet banking facilities sometimes are associated with surcharges, service charges, etc. Withdrawal or removal of these burdens are to be carried out.
6) It is to be guaranteed that there is high availability of internet and one can undertake transactions in a secured manner. The government has to develop confidence among the masses on the internet by imposing a strong check on the cyber crimes issues.
7) The vendors who are accepting or willing to accept payments via electronic means should be rewarded by the government through provision of tax benefits. This sort of incentive is surely going to encourage lots of business houses to have their online presence.
8) The late teenagers and the youth are the people who opt for cash-less transactions more than others. In order to make India cash-less, people of all ages are required to become tech savvy which is quite a difficult issue to address.
9) Most of the banks are having their presence only in urban and semi-urban areas. One can hardly find a substantial number of banks carrying out their operations in rural areas. If people residing in villages are not having their accounts in banks, it is impossible for them to carry out transactions via electronic means.
10) The government is yet to eradicate the social evils like illiteracy and unemployment from the country. If a person is illiterate or unemployed it is not possible for him/her to do something for his/her living. If there is no earning, a person cannot get any access to gadgets via which he/she can carry out cash-less transactions.
Conclusion on Cashless India
In India, only 5% of transactions in the economy is being taken place through electronic means. The Modi government is planning to make India a cash-less nation soon as a measure to address the issues of black money, fake currency notes, tax evasion, etc. It is highly probable that Goa is going to become the first state in the country to become cashless from December 31st of the current year. Making India a cashless nation is going to take a lot of time to make it happen. None of the country across the world has reached the aim of total cashless services. The target is even tough for a developing country like India to achieve.
