India is witnessing a paradigm shift towards a digital economy and a major financial revolution. In pursuit of its efforts to move towards a cashless economy the Government of India has launched “Vittiya Saksharta Abhiyan” to promote active participation of youth of Higher Educational Institutions to motivate all payers and payees to be embrace cashless economic system for transfer of funds.
Factsheet:
- The initiative has been launched by Shri. Prakash Javadekar, Minister for Human Resource Development. The primary aim is to mobilise youth and faculty to promote digital literacy and awareness among people around them who have been technologically averse.
- The Minister appealed to the institutions of higher education to promote a cashless campus and receive no payments in cash (fee/fines/deposits) and also not to make any payments in cash viz. wages/salaries/payments to vendors). This should also cover all shops, canteens and services on campus.
- The initiative aims to foster belief in ease of transactions via digital mode among students who will thereby act as agents of change and spread awareness among their families and immediate surroundings.
- Further on NCC/NSS volunteers should also contribute towards the cause by interacting with shopkeepers, vendors and their associations to promote cashless point of sale.
- The Ministry has also launched a webpage where students can register to give useful feedback and suggestions. Students can also share the progress of their efforts and work done so far in this direction.
- Various modes of digital payments were enumerated by the Ministry like Pre-paid Card, Debit Card/RuPay, Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD), Mobile Wallet, Aadhar Enabled Payment System( AEPS), Unified Payment Interface (UPI), also Point of Sale (Physical/Virtual) and appealed to students to ‘Go Digital’.
Thus, the initiative is launched to make digital transitions more acceptable and promote social equity by putting substantial curbs on black money.