" I am not an expert of demonetisation, I have nothing to say, but the prospect of digitisation in the country will make India reach in a place is always sought for"
This is precise comment of Mr Bill Gates, the CEO of Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation visited India very recently.But, in reality, there is a very big gap lying between the concept of digitisation and its optimum utilisation throughout the country as on date that I will try to analyse in this blog.
The use of digital platform in Government establishments and Financial companies, Banks etc is the basic of e governance. To attain a totality in digitisation, the first step is to computerise all State and Government departments. There must be a data bank for each records in Government establishments easily available with a mouse click in case of need. The entire process is yet to be completed in many states and one will find staffs are seated behind bulk files of paper records piled on the table in most government departments.Visitors find tough time to locate their necessary records and many are compelled to bribe some unscrupulous staffs to get their work done.Ministry of surface transport, Aviation etc are already digitised, but ironically again, common people are delayed to get there work done as data banks are not updated intentionally by a group of people in junior level to continue their dirty tricks of getting under the table. However, the HR department of almost all offices are digitised and salaries and other allowances are now directly credited to the account of concerned employee.This has minimised the manual workload substantially in both government offices as well as in banking arena where salaries to departments were paid manually in earlier days.This has plugged the avenue of some HR department employees who were used to ask bribe from their own colleagues for getting passed a home loan or a TA bill etc. Now let us note that what we have achieved till date :
a) Major Government departments are following digital platform.Data banks are created in most segments.
b) Payments are made through e-platform to suppliers and staffs.
c) 60% of population of the country are having a bank account and are issued an ATM come debit card. Rural and under privileged are brought under Government's Jana Dhan Yojana Scheme to open NO FRILLS ACCOUNT. They are simultaneously brought digital world through 'Ru Pay' gateway of digital payment.
d) All major Banks are functioning under Core Banking platform and customers are offered the facility of cashless transactions through RTGS, NEFT and internet Banking.
e) Government Subsidy on different scheme, Gas connection and payment under MGNREGA etc are made cashless and directly routed through respective accounts of beneficiary and thus plugged the intervention of middlemen who used to take a portion of humble pie of actual beneficiary since many decades.
f) Land banks are digitised.
In the field of public sector the digitisation has soared up rapidly in metros and tier I cities. The organised sector working in metros and large cities are mostly covered under e -platform. The clientele covered in these cities are mostly of higher middle class and high income groups. Working class or businessmen both are literate and well aware of digital world. Most of the citizen in metros and tier I cities prefer to do cashless transactions, viz. they buy their groceries and essentials through debit/credit cards. They buy their clothes and other necessities from large malls and go for cashless transaction. They use the transportation facility of private high end operator like OLA, UBER etc who operates through cashless payment wallets. For other daily needs they use app based cashless wallets and take the service of bigbusket.com or amazon.in for fruits and vegetables, flip cart or snap deal for any other necessities. Other then these, there are many payment wallets like patm, jabong, food panda, book my show etc are available options for them to service their every day needs fulfilled. . Banks are not far behind and largest Bank of the country SBI has come out with its own app based service like SBI Buddy, SBI Anywhere SBI m visa and so on.In a nutshell, citizens of metros and tier I cities are more or less digitised.Cashless life is a reality there. But,
The other part of the country on the contrary there is totally a different reality :
a) 40% of population is still un-banked and they never saw any thing other than currency notes.
b) Tier II and Tier III cities and smaller towns although large chunk of literate persons are staying there, but they find it comfortable to transact in cash.Retail business are preferable transact in cash and do not rely on POS terminals. Some of large business establishments and small malls are accepting cashless transactions through debit/credit cards.
c) Small towns and rural areas the infrastructure is alarmingly worse.Although a percentage of rural population are having their individual debit cards but in most cases they have to travel at least minimum 5/6 km to get the ATM kiosk or a Bank branch to withdraw their hard earned money.
d) Farmers are paid in cash by middlemen who buy their produce in the absence of any e-platform as a matter of practice since decades.
e) majority of people are still comfortable in handling their transaction needs in cash only.
f) Whole seller are refusing to accept payment other than cash from retail counterparts.
g) transportation other than aviation are generally done in cash payment only.
In this mixed effort of digitisation of economy by the Government the hammering of demonetisation has been an unexpected blow to the common men. Aftermath of the declaration of demonetisation of high denomination currency by the government the effect on people other than large cities and metros are huge.
a ) Prices of perishables are down dramatically. Farmers are stuck with produce in hand and no money to invest for the new harvesting season.Although Government came out with some punitive measures for farmers recently for buying of seeds.
b) Consumption is at an all time low. This will effect revenue collection for the governments and states.
c) In tier II and III cities the neighbourhood stores are losing out massively to the big baskets and the big bazaars. This deep freeze in trading will hurt small businesses the most.
d) People in rural and small town are perennially standing in serpentine queue to get their own hard earned valid money.
e) In high tech cities like Pune and Bangalore people are least effected by this declaration. They are as usual using their e-wallets for their A to Z need. Even Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation ( BMTC) has declared introducing prepaid smart card for commuter from January 2017 to boost cashless payment. but, 
Actually grey area of monetary system (the so called black money) has not seen much light till date. Barring a few small raid and minimum disclosure have not contributed much towards the main purpose of demonetisation. Instead, this cash sucked out of the system has taken the economy into a deep freeze. Government has approximately demonetised 14 lac crores and haven't injected even 1 lac crores back in the system. Our capacity to inject is also in doubt. While Government has scrapped 1,658 Cr notes of Rs 500 and 668 Cr notes of Rs 1000 our Printing capacity is just 100 Cr notes per month of Rs 500 and 133 Cr notes per month of Rs 2000. If RBI transfers the unaccounted notes as reserves to government, the trust in our currency will be hit.
This is looking grim.GDP of the country is effected. From an inflation led economy, we may be fighting to stop stagflation and wade of deflation. I just hope this will end soon."
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