Zirgham Hamid
Demonetisation, rhetorically given the name as Surgical Strike on black money experienced mixed reactions. Somewhere it brought disaster and is causing economic and social havoc in the everyday lives of people while at some places, the popular opinion is that it is going to be proven as a game changer plugging all the loopholes which led to the emergence of black money and exposing those who have been making use of their official positions, business or any other profession as cesspool of corruption. I am not going to discuss demonetisation rather what I am concerned with is the decision of transforming India into a digital economy in the backdrop of demonetisation. Govt has gradually shifted the demonetisation narrative from black money and corruption to an internet-driven cashless economy.
Some of the recent bold but hasty decisions taken by the Prime Minister reminds me of Fascism. Fascists believe that “Action, being beautiful in itself, must be taken, before or without any previous reflection” since “Thinking is a form of emasculation”. It fits many facets of dominance game played by Modi run Govt, calling it One-Man Govt would be a slight exaggeration. The degree of secrecy maintained as is disclosed by PM himself in reaching to the final decision of demonetisation, the hasty decision of giving an aggressive push to cashless or less-cash economy without taking a comprehensive view of different situations and circumstances prevailing in the country in general and respective states in particular and other allied decisions seems contrary to the spirit of democracy.
These days, the farewell is not limited to only schools, colleges and other institutions but has also transcended the limit to undermining the established norms. These norms are recklessely and ruthlessly given a go by. Yes I applaud the the dream of the Govt to transform India into a cashless economy or less- cash economy where insistence will be on promoting more and more online transactions and discouraging use of cash in day to day life. But for a country like India, this dream is not so easy to be realised in a short span of time. This requires a herculean task to be performed to firstly form digital base in India. Without having a digital base in India, the road to near cashless economy seems quite long, destination is far and journey is likely to be slow and tedious. For forming a stong digital base and cashless technologies to work,a strong, uninterrupted and less expensive Internet is sine quo non.
PM Modi while addressing the nation during Mann ki Baat programme laid much emphasis on cashless economy and urged the people of India to learn how digital transactions work. While PM Modi is right in urging the people of India to learn new ways of business transactions and be a part of digital economy, our country has not yet progressed upto the expectations and satisfaction of him. There are some crucial hurdles that are hindering the realisation of a digital economy. They are:
Digital Literacy: India is a leading IT-enabled service provider to the rest of the world, but this cant be equated with digital literacy. This success says little about digital literacy of its population. It is reported that India’s internet usage is impressive making it second largest country after China in terms of number of users in a country. Most quoted website (www.internetworldstats.com) reports that number of Internet users in India rose from 5.6 million in 2000 to 233 million in June 2014 and 462 million in June 2016. But the emphasis is to be laid on the definition of the term user. It is very loose as “any individual who can access the Internet at home via any device type connection”. It covers all the users including those who have access to Internet through mobile, broadband or any type of connection such as 2G, 3G, 4G, wifi etc. the word used is ‘access’ and not ‘actual use’. Mobile usage has considerably increased which inflates the internet users figure and so it conceals the fact that Indian population still have low Internet peneteration. A simple access to Internet through a mobile can’t be very helpful in making business transaction. Sometimes the facilities of business transactions are not supported as some mobiles have small server and sometimes the Internet speed is too low to complete a business transaction successfully. Not all the people can afford a broadband connection hence the rapid use of Internet through mobile has misled the figures. Nearly 60 per cent of the world population is still offline and can’t participate in digital economy in a meaningful way.
Unfamiliarity With New Technologies: there are so many certified bank apps and other technologies available for making online business transaction, but people are not familiar with the usage of these technologies.
(To be continued)
