Cashless?
Lanura could be a village with no bank and erratic electricity. It currently lives with the burden of a tag: “J&K’s 1st cashless village”
AROUND high noon on a Th, there's no electricity in Lanura. A unforeseen blast of wind had snapped the ability lines and that they currently lie listlessly over the tree ace. Sitting in his summation grocery search, Ghulam Mahound Dar says, “This is however it's here. we tend to barely get electricity for 6 hours every day. And once we do, it's in spurts. we are able to ne'er arrange our day.”
Welcome to Lanura, J&K’s initial formally declared “cashless” village. Here, most villagers haven’t seen or perhaps detected of credit cards; the net willn’t work and once it does, is frustratingly slow; and electricity is commonly at the mercy of the weather.
lanura, cashless, cashless village, jammu and Jammu and Kashmir village, cashless economy, termination, india news, latest news The village, with a population of around one,500, has solely six retailers — a chemist and 5 grocers. None of the shopkeepers encompasses a card machine or has ever used internet banking. specific exposure by Shuaib Masoodi
AROUND high noon on a Th, there's no electricity in Lanura. A unforeseen blast of wind had snapped the ability lines and that they currently lie listlessly over the tree ace. Sitting in his summation grocery search, Ghulam Mahound Dar says, “This is however it's here. we tend to barely get electricity for 6 hours every day. And once we do, it's in spurts. we are able to ne'er arrange our day.”
Welcome to Lanura, J&K’s initial formally declared “cashless” village. Here, most villagers haven’t seen or perhaps detected of credit cards; the net willn’t work and once it does, is frustratingly slow; and electricity is commonly at the mercy of the weather.
“Of course, our village is cash-less,” says Ghulam Hassan tribal sheik, the previous sarpanch of the village, barely concealing his satire. “We square measure a village of daily-wage labourers. we tend to earn some thousands a month and currently they are saying we tend to should learn to measure while not money. So yes, we tend to square measure cashless,” he says sitting on his haunches outside one amongst the retailers within the centre of the village.
On Gregorian calendar month fifteen, a unharness on the official web site of district Budgam claimed that Lanura had become the “first village in Jammu and Kashmir” to travel “cashless”. “At least one member of every house has been trained in EPS (Electronic Payment System). 13 merchants are brought beneath EPS… the full range of persons trained on EPS within the village has touched a hundred and fifty,” the discharge scan.
An unmetalled road snakes into Lanura village, thirteen klick from the district headqaurters of Budgam in central Jammu and Kashmir. It’s one amongst the many villages declared “backward” by the govt, its homes largely unplastered or derelict picket structures. Over eighty per cent of the villagers work as daily wagers within the close villages of Kremshore, Dreigam and Chadoora. A village of a hundred and fifty households, Lanura encompasses a acquisition rate of but thirty five per cent as against the state average of sixty seven per cent. The village solely encompasses a secondary school and kids ought to travel Khansahib, a village eight klick away, to review additional. the closest health center, a primary health centre, is three klick away.
But it’s the erratic electricity that troubles them the foremost, villagers say. excluding the frequent outages, whenever electricity bangs, the cellular phone tower, that is while not electric battery back-up, goes on the blink and also the villagers struggle to form phone calls. the sole street lightweight within the village hasn’t been operating for the past four months.
Around four pm, Naseer Ahmad Thoker, a laborer United Nations agency is additionally a category XII student, joins the little cluster of men outside Dar’s search United Nations agency square measure currently talking cash and their new-found “cashless” standing.
“Cashless? square measure they speech communication we are going to ought to get by with even less money? i'm a laborer and solely earn around Rs two hundred every day. what's going to I do with things like Paytm? would like|i want|i would like} money to feed my family and that i need it in my hands at the top of each day. what's going to I do with cash in my account?” he asks.
The village, with a population of around 1,500, has solely six retailers — a chemist and 5 grocers. None of the shopkeepers encompasses a card machine or has ever used internet banking. only 1 of them — Firdous Ahmad, United Nations agency runs the medical store in Laruna — has detected of Paytm.
Ahmad says he was tutored the way to use Paytm a few two weeks agone however he uses it solely to recharge his own paid cellphones. This Th, specifically every week once the village was declared “cashless”, nearly each dealing in Lanura’s six retailers is either in money or on credit.
“What is that this ‘cashless’? we've got been hearing this word for the past week however what will this even mean?” snaps merchandiser Dar. “I get money for what I sell and if someone doesn’t have money, I provides it to him on credit and that they pay American state at the top of the month. It’s forever been that approach. Why square measure they attempting to vary things now? For what?”
Villager Ghulam Nabi Najar, a retired Armyman United Nations agency has spent many years in Pune and came to Lanura solely some years agone, says, “In Pune, I even have seen individuals mistreatment cards to form payments however I even have ne'er done it myself. I don’t skills to try and do it. we tend to square measure poor villagers and most people don’t even have good phones”.
Though most the villagers have bank accounts, Lanura doesn’t have a bank or associate ATM; the closest one is at the J&K Bank branch in Kremshore, three klick from the village.
Riyaz Ahmad tribal sheik, 28, from Lanura, works as a guard at the ATM in Kremshore. “This ‘cashless village’ could be a joke,” he says, standing with the cluster outside Dar’s search. “Many villagers don’t even skills to use associate ATM card. they provide it to American state and request from me to withdraw cash for them.”
Riyaz’s name figures within the list of individuals from Lanura United Nations agency are trained to show villagers within the use of technology for cashless transactions.
The project to coach individuals in electronic payments was launched earlier this year by the Common Services Centre (CSC) of the Ministry of physical science and knowledge Technology. The coaching is imparted by Village Level Entrepreneurs (VLEs) connected to CSCs. the 2 CSC trainers at Lanura have submitted to the District information science Officer in Budgam a listing of a hundred and fifty individuals in Lanura United Nations agency have apparently been “trained”.
Waseem Manzoor, a category VI student, conjointly figures on this list. “I don’t grasp something concerning this coaching. I will solely use the cellular phone to form calls, nothing additional,” he says.
Mohammad Yasin Thoker, a 35-year-old resident of Lanura, is one amongst the 2 CSC trainers from the village. “We have trained around a hundred and fifty villagers in electronic payment systems, one from every house,” he claims. once asked if he might determine the individuals he trained, he says, “None of the individuals we tend to trained is in village nowadays.”
The rush to declare villages as “cashless” started once the Centre proclaimed the termination of Rs five hundred and Rs one,000 notes on November eight. whereas termination hasn’t affected Lanura abundant — “we didn’t have abundant money anyway,” says merchandiser Dar — the villagers say they need currently been declared “cashless” to avoid wasting the Central government’s image.
“We square measure illiterate individuals. the govt will do what it desires however why drag North American country into it? we tend to square measure currently the butt of jokes. individuals come back here, look through, kid North American country and say ‘This village is cashless?’.”
Budgam Deputy Commissioner Mir Altaf Ahmad admits that Lanura is way from cashless. “I don’t perceive however they will try this,” he says. “They (villagers) don’t skills to use ATM cards and that they square measure talking concerning going cashless. i will be able to verify it and enquire however it (official release) got done.”
0 comments:
Post a Comment