Global India: Massive Efforts Needed to Educate People for e-Tra...

Global India: Massive Efforts Needed to Educate People for e-Tra...: N K Goyal and S D Saxena of CMAI Association of India  interacting with media persons  on the issue of educating masses on e-t...

Massive Efforts Needed to Educate People for e-Transactions : N K Goyal

N K Goyal and S D Saxena of CMAI Association of India 
interacting with media persons 
on the issue of educating masses on e-transactions 

By Vinod Varshney

With demonetization woes continuing across the country at an unprecedented level, the ICT sector eyes an opportunity in the situation after Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a dramatic fashion broadcast this decision in a message to the nation on the night of November 8 this year.

Amidst widespread criticism of the demonetization by most opposition political parties and renowned economists, any support to the move can only be a soothing balm to the government. The latest voice of support to the demonetization move comes from the CMAI Association of India, which boasts as being one of the largest ICT associations based in India with 48,500 members and 54 MoU partners worldwide, actively engaged in development and promotion for telecommunications and education sector.

N K Goyal, the president of the organisation does agree that the government move has brought enormous hardship to the people, but he believes that it would be a temporary phase and millions of people in the country who own smart phones would be transcending to making mobile payments as a natural habit. But as old habits die hard, he says that massive efforts are needed to bring about the requisite change.

He informed Thursday in a chat with media persons that the CMAI Association of India which deals with more than one lac educational institutions and academic professionals consisting of universities, technical & engineering colleges and schools, plans to initiate an online free training programmes and large scale education drive for use of e-transactions.

Goyal expressed hopes that the forthcoming budget may make big announcement to support education programmes for e-transactions to facilitate the country entering into a digital economy era.

The CMAI Association of India has suggested a number of thrust areas to make the digital economy mission of the government successful like providing volunteers to help in educating people at the grass-root levels especially in the rural areas, launching programmes involving university students and senior citizens to educate rural and low income urban population in the use of e-payments, helping small and marginal traders, especially vendors for the use of e-payment methods. Surprisingly, the Association has missed out in this list the private doctors who had been charging their fees in cash only across the country and similarly the private schools who pay their teachers in cash after getting signatures on a higher salary slip. The point was raised by a media person in the discussion with the CMAI Association president. Goyal insisted change would come in these sections of society also.

Being a player in the technology space, the CMAI Association also recommends that all available options for increasing connectivity should be explored including satellite, optical fibre and new technologies such as ‘white space’. 

Thankfully, the members of the CMAI Association do not dispute that there has been increase in frauds in e-transactions but they insist that the situation is not as alarming as has been made out in certain quarters. They ask in return whether people do never get defrauded and lose money when they make cash transactions. They insist that e-transactions despite all the risks involved offer better safety and also transparency.

SD Saxena, vice chairman of the CMAI is conscious of the importance of the safety aspect and says that at the banking level the encryption level is robust but at the end-user level, it is weak and needs to be bolstered in order to generate better confidence among people whose fear cannot be brushed aside in backdrop of the incident when the security of 40 lac debit cards got compromised a few months ago.    

   

How Modi’s demonetization move is a drama!

By Vinod Varshney

The Modi government is causing so much hardship to common people, farmers and retail businessmen across the country as prime minister Modi unwittingly demonetized the currency which is now of low denomination in value terms and is used by common people in day-to-day transactions. People go to buy even fruits and vegetable carrying a 500 rupee note and street-venders do accept them routinely.

One needs to look at the cost inflation index which is 1125 today on the basis of its value ‘100’ in 1980-81. Its value was probably 80 in 1978. Thus, the value of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 today is only Rs 36 and Rs 72 in terms of the value of Indian rupee in 1978 when Desai government had undertaken demonetization exercise so successfully. 

When prime minister Morarji Desai had demonetized 500, 1,000 and 10,000 rupee notes in 1978, he was truly eliminating high value notes and thus conducting a true surgical strike against black money hoarders. I had been a sub-editor then with Hindustan, a national Hindi newspaper published from New Delhi. I like other common people had seen the Rs 1,000 note probably only once or twice. But never got to see a 10,000 rupee note!

Because of the demonetization of the high value notes, the Desai government had hurt only the black money hoarders, not the common man. That was the reason, there were no deaths like this time of old people standing in queues for long hours to get their notes converted and no deaths of children for not being able to get treatments owing to old 500 and 1,000 rupee notes not being acceptable to private medical service providers.

Prime minister Modi has rightly been accused for his arrogance as he fails to realize that his move is hurting common people across the board, in some cases even more than the black money hoarders who are using touts to get their notes changed with the new ones for a price.

Had Modi government really been sincere to hit the black money hoarders in India, it would have demonetized the Kisan Vikas Patra which were discontinued by the Manmohan Singh government as an action against black money hoarding but were relaunched audaciously by the Modi government to facilitate black money owners.

The current demonetization exercise looks more like a sadistic drama, and to say mildly, a face saver amidst countrywide criticism of prime minister Narendra Modi who failed to bring back the black money stashed abroad that was promised to be done within 100 days of forming his government during election rallies in 2014.