Letters: Towards less cash

With reference to “Jolt of currency crunch not enough to digitise cash” (March 13), the demonetisation initiative by the government of India that aimed towards making our nation a “cash-less” society has now taken a U-turn for a “less-cash” one keeping in mind the cash dependency of the citizens. The recent trends show that the share of electronic payments has seen a downfall in the month of February as compared to the figures of December and January. The reason is quite simple: “We become what we repeatedly do”. Our society has been so keenly dependent on cash for making transactions of any sort that after sufficient cash had been pumped back in the economy a majority routed back to their old friend, cash, especially the recent adopters of digital economy. 

Things take time and when it comes to changing the habits of people it takes even longer. Prior to November 2016, less than five per cent of the transactions used to take place digitally and now it is way ahead compared to expectations. But the challenge is to sustain the current momentum because as a cash economy in FY 2015 for instance the Reserve Bank of India had to spend nearly Rs 27 billion on just the activity of issuing currency and management.

But habits ought to change, be it with “Digital Saksharta Abhiyan” or with tough measures such as capping cash transactions up to Rs 3 lakh or levying bank charges on cash transactions beyond the allowed number of transactions. ICICI, Axis and HDFC Bank have already started levying bank charges such as Rs 150 for more than four transactions for cash deposits and withdrawals. Moreover, to include the rural sector under the ambit of digital economy the National Optical Fibre Network would be connecting nearly 2.5 lakh village panchayats with the internet by the end of 2017. Thus, with the times to come we would be able to see sustainability in the number of digital transactions as more and more people would come to know about their benefits. If that does not work, the stringent measures of the government would definitely make that happen.

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