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PM Modi: Digital India is fight against touts
Prime Minister Narendra Modi today said his pet Digital India initiative is a war against touts and middlemen, helping check blackmoney and black marketing while creating immense job opportunities in small towns and rural areas.
New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi today said his pet Digital India initiative is a war against touts and middlemen, helping check blackmoney and black marketing while creating immense job opportunities in small towns and rural areas.
Interacting with beneficiaries of the various Digital India efforts, Modi pushed for use of RuPay, the Indian version of credit/debit card, saying when other similar cards are used the transaction or processing fee goes to foreign companies. However, when RuPay is used, the money remains in India and is used for development works and infrastructure projects.
The Prime Minister said people made fun of him when he first spoke of digital payments in the country where people were used to stashing money underneath the pillow and ration could not be availed without middlemen. But experiences narrated by beneficiaries of how services are reaching people directly are a befitting reply to such naysayers, he said.
Now, some people are spreading rumours that money is not safe when used digitally, he said, adding such conspiracies will be hatched as he has created problems for middlemen.
"Digital India is a fight with dalali (touts)," he said. "Digital India has checked blackmoney and black marketing and uprooted middlemen."
From booking rail tickets to paying bills and availing government services like pensions by giving proof of existence digitally, people are being empowered, he said. "Kisi ko dikhe ya na dikhe, par desh badal raha hai (people may or may not see, but the country is changing)," Modi said. Digital India is about education, employment, entrepreneurship and empowerment. "It will help realise the objective of reform, perform, transform," he said.
"The movement towards more digital payments is linked to eliminating middlemen," he said.
Modi associated use of RuPay card with nationalism.
"Not everyone can go and fight on the borders. Using RuPay is also a kind of national service," he said, adding more than 50 crore RuPay cards have been issued in less than four years of its launch.
RuPay, he said, is bringing a revolutionary change in digital payments. The card is not just being used in India but abroad as well, he said, narrating how he used RuPay to buy some goods during his recent visit to Singapore. Digital India is a campaign launched to ensure the government services are made available to citizens electronically by improved online infrastructure, increasing internet connectivity and by making the country digitally empowered in the field of technology.
Complementing it has been the launch of large-scale digital payment processing platforms like the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), Bharat Interface for Money (BHIM), Immediate Payment Service (IMPS) and India's home-grown card network RuPay.
Modi said while the National Knowledge Network has linked over 1,700 educational and research institutions, libraries, academicians, government officials and more than 5 crore students, citizen engagement platform 'mygov' has 60 lakh volunteers.
"We can now fight for our rights," he said.
He said the push for domestic electronic manufacturing has seen setting up of 23 electronic manufacturing centres in 15 states and the number of units manufacturing mobile handsets and their components multiply from just two in 2014 to over 120 now, providing direct and indirect employment to 4.5 lakh people. (PTI)