A year after demonetisation, network issues hamper Maharashtra's 'cashless' village

Maharashtra had declared Dhasai village its first "cashless village" within a month of the Centre announcing demonetisation, which effectively turned old Rs 500 and all Rs 1,000 currency notes into illegal tender overnight.

The village, around 140 kilometres from Mumbai, was declared 'cashless' by Maharashtra's finance minister Sudhir Mungantiwar in December 2016.

However, a year after demonetisation, the village has more or less switched back to using cash. All has not gone according to plan and bank kiosks in the village are also unable to function, a media report suggests.

According to a report by Mint, bank officials said that the problem was bad internet connectivity in and around the village. The report further states that the situation has prevailed for the last four months.

The villagers have now demanded that WiFi must be provided as the cellular networks do not work well in the interior areas.

The project

Starting December 1, 2016, Dhasai village started making all payments in the village through plastic money. Traders, vegetable and fruit vendors and others providing goods and services in Dhasai started using swipe machines for cashless transactions.

"Prime Minister Narendra Modi has taken a revolutionary step to check corruption and terror funding by banning old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes. He has shown us a dream and has taken steps in that direction," Mungantiwar had said.

Dhasai, in Murbad taluka, has a population of around 10,000. Around 60 smaller villages nearby also depend on Dhasai for trade and their daily needs.

The project to turn the village 'cashless' was undertaken by Bank of Baroda who had sought help of an NGO to train the villagers in using digital methods of transactions.

The bank had distributed Electronic Data Capture (EDC) machines to traders for free.

Following demonetisation, the government had encouraged citizens to switch to cashless transaction, to help digitalise the economy.