While talking to Mr. Shubham (Name changed) about his experience in Mumbai in last 10 years and what all changed in the last 5 years and is that change good or not, I realized that there’s one thing which is being less talked in the political game in the election season but have actually touched almost every person in the big cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore etc.
Yes! You might have guessed it right from the title – it’s about DIGITAL MONEY – DIGITAL INDIA. In November 2016, Prime Minister Narendra Modi shocked the world with the historic announcement of banning of INR 500 and INR 2000 notes. So, many eminent economists in the world applauded this bold step by Indian Prime Minister and there were some claiming how it is a disaster for the Indian Economy. Though not much have we lost in the economic perspective definitely there are so many things which got changed post Demonetization. The biggest of which is Mobile Wallets, Digital payments.
Mr. Shubham said that one day he forgot his wallet at home while on his way to his office and he realized that at the time when he reached the office by cab and then he looked for his wallet to pay the driver. He said I realized that I forgot my wallet at home but that thought did not bother me a lot, because of digital payments being so accessible and so easy. He paid the cab driver from the mobile wallet and started his work.
As a marketing person, he needs to travel in the city after marking his attendance. He started his journey without the wallet. He said that at least in Mumbai digital payment is so common that even local vendors (Thellas) use those apps. He ate the famous vada paav and paid the vendor through the mobile wallet (PayTM, Google Pay, Tez etc.). Obviously, it becomes too costly to travel through Mumbai for sales in Cabs, he prefers to go by Local. He said, now you can easily book tickets of Local Trains through Apps available and they booking is so user-friendly that he can even teach that anyone, after a pause he again said – yeah! Literally anyone.
When I enquired him about how was his day without the wallet – he said, “It was nothing special. It was same old day but I thanked Mr. Modi in the night because of revolutionizing the payment system and making it effortlessly easy otherwise surviving in city like Mumbai without a wallet would have been a big nightmare!”
Do you know? In October 2016 – UPI payments (transactions) were about 50 crores which today is more than 1,00,000 crores in a month.
What did the Government do to achieve this?
Making the internet accessible to everyone with extremely affordable price. Earlier 1Gb internet was about 250 INR which today is about 12 INR. Call Tariffs has also reduced drastically. If we calculate the saving of a common person on just mobile bills roughly then on an average we have saved a big sum of money.
Amount/ Duration | 500/- INR | 1000/- INR | 1500/- INR |
1 month | 476/- | 952/- | 1428/- |
1 year | 5712/- | 11,424/- | 17,136/- |
5 years | 28,560/- | 57,120/- | 85,680 |
Many Digital Payments start-ups started in these 5 years and they have now become the heart of the common people’s wallet. It was possible just because of the ease of doing business in which the Government’s rank is improving every year consistently.
The government was super successful in marketing the need for digital payments and promoting digital payments; the results of which is the tremendous growth in digital payments.
E-commerce sales have also been at the top and making the life of common people (especially in big cities) easy with single day deliveries. Start-Ups like Zomato, Swiggy has made the food on your table with just a few clicks on your mobile devices.
Definitely with the introduction of digital payment life has become easy and at the same time it may have reduced cash transactions means fewer chances of corruption. This big achievement of Modi Government is definitely one of the less talked but it has impacted the lives of millions.
