Ibrahimpur village in Siddipet district of Telangana has become the first village in south India to go cashless in the wake of demonetisation. The district administration has opened bank accounts for all villagers and given all of them debit cards. They set up card swipe machines in shops and micro ATMs in ration shops. Ibrahimpur is the adopted village of the Irrigation minister T. Harish Rao.
To speed up the process of going cashless at the earliest, the irrigation minister has announced incentives for the villages that go cashless, with the first, second and third villages receiving incentives of Rs 10 Lakh, Rs 5 lakh and Rs 2 lakh respectively.
The achievement of the village is in line with the state government’s resolution to make Siddipet Assembly constituency cashless by the end of December. Ibrahimpur is close to being a model village and has a toilet in every house.
The Telangana government had announced that they would shortly come out with e-wallet for cashless transactions under the name TS Wallet. Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao has also appealed to the people to go for banking transactions and said that the government would encourage all procurements and sales through banking transactions.
Rao said, “Transactions only up to Rs 500 can be done in cash, and over a period of time, we will do away with this also to make it hundred per cent cashless transactions. This model will then be replicated.”
KCR also said that all high value transactions in some departments like registration and excise would be through net banking. Payments in agriculture market yards, fair price shops and milk supply will be done through banks. He said that a committee comprising five bureaucrats had been formed to work out modalities for preparing a policy towards cashless e-payment system.
Stating that Telangana had only 5,200 bank branches which were not sufficient, the chief minister asked for one bank in every three to four villages and an increase in the number of ATMs across the state.
KCR said the number of swiping machines also had to be increased drastically for cashless transactions. He pointed out that the country had only 14.5 lakh Point of Sale (PoS) machines, and said for a cashless society the country needed 10 crore machines. Telangana currently has less than one lakh PoS machines.
Meanwhile, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu launched the AP Purse on Tuesday to help people adopt the procedure of cashless payments. AP Purse is a mobile wallet, Tweeted Naidu and claimed that the state was the first in the country to switch to digital payments. The AP Purse mobile app has 13 mobile banking and 10 mobile wallets available in it, and can help people pay their bills and carry out their cash transactions.
Naidu advised people to opt for mobile banking to come out of the present currency crisis. He added that the government would encourage people, including students, to improve digital financial literacy among public. He said the government would provide incentives to the agents named 'Marpu Nestam'. Engineering students will be encouraged to train people in mobile banking transactions using several wallets. The students can thus earn while learning.
Naidu said that the state government introduced cashless transactions at fair price shops and completed the 70 per cent of transactions using Aadhar linkage to provide relief to people suffering from shortage of small currency notes.
He said that Rs 2,472 crore was available with banks and that the state would receive Rs 1,100 crore. He hoped that the situation would improve soon.
Naidu, who is the convener of a committee on post demonetisation crisis and digital transactions, has also promised to discuss the problems at a meeting to be held on December 8 in Mumbai.
