Anchal Srivastava
E-economy changes the scenario of Jammu and Kashmir. In the last two and half years, J&K has become the leader in digital transactions all over India. Last year in October, Jammu & Kashmir has recorded more than two crore e-transactions which is significantly higher than 10.5 lakh e-transactions during the same period in 2021. Interestingly, ahead of Eid-ul-Fitr, J&K Bank’s digital and alternate channels have recorded around 60 lakh transactions in three days amounting to whooping Rs. 2510 Crore. In 2013 the total number of e-transaction was merely 20 lakh.
Apart from Jammu and Kashmir, India is also emerging significantly as a champion in the global digital economy. According to the report by Google, Temasek, and Bain & Company today ‘The e-economy of a Billion Connected Indians’, India is in its ‘digital decade’ and its internet economy is expected to grow six folds to $1 Trillion by 2030. It will grow to 12-13% of its GDP by the end of the decade from the current 4-5%. The report’s findings highlight the thriving digital landscape and the impact of technology in transforming the Indian economy. It emphasized most of the purchases in the future are going to be digital.
According to MyGovIndia report, India with 89.5 million digital transactions in the year 2022 has topped the list of five countries in digital payments. India in the year 2022 accounting for 46 per cent of the global real-time payments, adding that the digital payment transactions in India is more than the other four leading countries combined. Second, on the list is Brazil which amounted to 29.2 million transactions followed by China with 17.6 million transactions. On number four is Thailand with 16.5 million digital transactions followed by South Korea with 8 million worth of transactions,
The GDP of J&K is anticipated to surpass Rs 2.30 lakh crore with a growth rate of 10 percent in the fiscal year 2023-2024. According to the J&K’s Budget 2023-24 tabled by the Union Finance Minister, in the financial year 2022-23, J&K’s GDP was pegged at 2,09,752 crore. The tax and GDP ratio of the state is at 8.82 percent for 2023-24, which is higher than the previous year of 7.77 percent. The debt-GDP ratio for 2023-24 is 49 percent, which has J&K at second-highest debt-GDP ratio in the country. The states with the highest debt-to-GSDP ratio in 2021-22 in the country include Punjab, Rajasthan, West Bengal, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh.
The expansion of the digital sphere is led by increased digital consumption in sectors like e-commerce, online travel, food delivery, ed-tech, and ride-hailing. These sectors will drive digital growth and India’s global GDP. Earlier in the year, Prime Minister Modi also said that he believes technology use will help India become a developed nation by 2047 by focusing digital revolution reaching everyone. The digital payment growth rate of India is surpassing major developed countries like UK and US according to RBI’s annual report. India has embraced the power of technology and harnessed it to foster economic growth, inclusivity, and empowerment.
Another report by IMAI released last year stated that there are a total of 692 million active internet users in India, including 351 million from rural India and 341 from urban India. The report estimated that there will be 900 million internet users in India by 2025. It is important to note that the difference between the number of rural and urban internet users is not wide and rapidly closing. According to ‘The e-Conomy of a Billion Connected Indians’, residents of Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities and villages will “play a material role in unlocking the $1T internet economy”. These consumers’ spending represents three times that of the top 60 cities. It mentioned that 83 percent of these customers are open to trying new products or new brands because digital opened a plethora of new choices. Consumers from small cities and villages are catching up fast with the Metro consumers with their practices, a boon for small businesses.
The growth of the digital economy is also anticipated to make India more appealing for investments in the coming years. According to the state document, the GST collection in J&K is Rs 6666.04 crore up to February 2023, which has shown a growth of 14.64 percent over the same period of the previous financial year 2021-22. The MST collection in J&K is Rs 1444.45 crore up to ending February 2023. The stamp collection is Rs 438.88 crore upto February 2023 against Rs 401.44 crore during the last financial year 2021-22, showing a growth of 9.33 percent. Jammu and Kashmir government built a digital society, offering 446 services online, and government entire administration is paperless and this state became the witness a digital revolution. In a short span of two-three years, J&K state government have taken a giant leap to create a user-centric service delivery system and a paperless administration function through e-office. The impact of India’s digital economy is more prominent than the people realize. The government initiatives like DISHA launched in 2016 aimed to make at least one person digitally literate in every household continue to bridge the physical and cyberworlds and push the digital revolution.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that India is number one in digital payments and that the country’s rural economy is transforming. J&K Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha also said that the Prime Minister ended decades of discrimination and efforts to maintain people-centric efforts is negotiated in the state. The e-commerce fuel the economy of J&K as well as India but it also poses challenges of data privacy, cybercrime, and monopoly of certain kind. It is crucial for stakeholders, including the government to make regulations looking out for possible threats and also the private sector, and civil society, to collaborate and address the challenges leveraging the opportunities presented by India’s digital revolution.
(The writer is the student of Post Graduate Diploma in Digital Media, IIMC Jammu).
