Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu is contemplating to “suitably reward” the “cashless villages” in the country to ensure rural India’s fast transition into a cashless economy.
Naidu, who heads the 13-member higher powered committee on demonetisation, is keen to involve the vast majority of the rural people in the Centre’s cashless economy programme that is all set to get a further push in 2017. The panel appointed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi will hold its first meeting on Wednesday and Thursday in New Delhi.
Sources close to Naidu said the Andhra CM is likely to meet PM Modi and finalise the modalities for the panel that is likely to focus on short- term and long-term measures to deal with the scrapping of bigger denomination notes.
Besides Naidu, the panel includes five other Chief Ministers—Shivraj Singh Chouhan (Madhya Pradesh), Devendra Fadnavis (Maharashtra), Naveen Patnaik (Orissa), Pawan Kumar Chamling (Sikkim) and V. Narayanasamy (Pondicherry). NITI Aayog vice-chairman Arvind Panagariya is also a member. NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant is the panel’s member-secretary.
Sources told The Sunday Guardian that Naidu has decided to ask other expert members of the panel—UIDAI former chairman Nandan Nilekani, Boston Consulting Group chairman Janamejaya Sinha, netCORE managing director Rajesh Jain, iSPIRIT co-founder Sharad Sharma and IIM-Ahmedabad professor Jayant Varma—to prepare backgrounders for the meeting.
According to a senior functionary in the Andhra Pradesh State Planning Board, who is assisting CM Naidu, the panel would collect extensive inputs from within and outside the country to ready a fool-proof cashless economy that meets the needs of India. “We are sure the panel would submit its first interim report by the middle of 2017,” he said, preferring anonymity.
Naidu, who has held several rounds of talks with his aides and some of those on the committee, wants to take up restoration of supply of enough new currency notes and recalibration of ATMs on a priority basis. The panel would then focus on promoting cashless payments through electronic and other digital platforms so that the extent of currency transactions in the overall GDP would be brought down to the desired levels of around seven percent, sources revealed.
Naidu who sought the views of his ministers on Friday in Amaravati felt that he should promote competition among the villages where the best cashless hamlets would be identified on the lines of the rankings of Swachh Bharat and Smart Cities and doled out prizes ranging between Rs 10,000 and Rs 10,00,000.
Naidu’s other measures will include supply of lakhs of swiping machines to all villages and at all important public points like highway motels, petrol pumps, schools and colleges and hospitals, besides encouraging all small and petty business people to purchase PoS (Point of Sale) machines.
Naidu is contemplating to organise large training and orientation classes to government employees and others in private sector to encourage them for cashless transactions. Once people are convinced about the safety of their money in payment gateways, it would be easy for them to stick to new practices, said sources assisting Naidu.
Naidu told his Cabinet colleagues that he would be touring the world in the coming months to study and analyse the best practices on cashless economy in the developed countries.
“We will follow wherever there is a best practice and try to improve them to meet the Indian conditions,” Naidu told his Cabinet colleagues.
Though this is a financial panel with a fixed frame of work, its constitution has worked wonders to the BJP led NDA government. Naidu is immensely pleased with the fact that he has been urged to head the panel which would frame rules and norms for the entire country. “Now he is like a Union minister who looks after the entire country,” said AP Information Minister P. Raghunatha Reddy.
Besides Raghunatha Reddy, several other ministers are more than happy that RBI has sent Rs 2,420 crore cash to AP on Friday to meet its urgent requirements for the salaried people. For the last few weeks, AP had been sending messages to RBI to send some cash to meet the rush at banks.