There’s no denying that India’s digital economy has seen unprecedented success. When the Narendra Modi government announced direct bank transfer for welfare schemes and promoted cashless transactions, many expressed doubts about how this would pan out.
But all the doubts evaporated when UPI became a massive success. The success of UPI in India is resulting in several countries accepting UPI payments and are linking their own payments with UPI. Countries like Singapore, Bhutan and Nepal and a few more have started to accept payments through UPI.
Coming to direct bank transfers, the government has once again done wonders by making over crores of hassle-free transfers to the beneficiaries. The recent information provided by the government revealed that over 6.3 lakh crores were transferred to the beneficiaries in 2021-22 through direct bank transfer.
For a country like India, in which the majority lives in rural areas, this is not a small feat. This very same achievement was applauded by the IMF. Its deputy director paolo Mauro termed India’s digital transfer a logistical marvel.
How did this really happen? It is an interesting story. Let me explain it briefly. Let’s start with Aadhar. It was brought by the Congress government in 2009 as a unique identification authority. Later, the BJP government introduced a scheme called Jan Dhan yojana through aadhar card as proof. It encouraged the citizens to open a bank account. Due to this reason, not only the urban population but the majority of the rural opened bank accounts and 1,80,96,130 accounts were opened in one week when this scheme was introduced. This move has even created a Guinness book of world Records, which termed it amazing.
Then came the most important link called Unified Payments Interface. In short, UPI. After introducing UPI, the government has taken direct bank transfer to whole another level. Be it PM Kisan yojan, PM fasal bhima yojana, PM kisan samman nidhi or transferring money to low-income people during corona…….the government has been successfully transferring money to the subsidy holders and is weeding out fake beneficiaries.
This has inspired several countries to start working on their own cashless transactions. Seeing the success of UPI, Google suggested America’s federal reserve in developing its own real-time payment system.
With the IMF deputy director’s statements, it has once again been proved how India is emerging not only as a global powerhouse through various schemes and unprecedented moves.
