Surakhpur goes cashless: Villagers welcome move with open arms

These days, walking miles after miles to withdraw cash to meet her daily chores has become a passé for Sonia. Post digitisation, life has become a lot easier in Surakhpur.

The move of the government agencies to digitise the whole village has provided relief to hundreds others like Sonia and brought services at their doorstep.

With availing cashless facility, whether it's women, child or senior citizens, all living in the village have a good reason to bid farewell to cash as they faced immense hardships during the days of demonetisation.

After going digital, the village located on Delhi-Haryana border has left a mark of its own on the map of the city as a fully digital pocket.

"Being the only young member of my family, I had no option other than traveling 5-10 kilometres for cash withdrawal keeping my studies at bay. The situation further deteriorated when ATMs/banks went dry after the currency ban and after covering long distances, we returned bare-handed.

"Even after the situation eased, we have been forced to approach ATMs and banks located at huge distances from here since the village has neither a single bank nor an ATM kiosk. Now, after availing this unique system of going cashless, the entire village is enjoying a cheerful movement," said Sonia.

The other villagers echo similar thoughts as they have been enjoying a hassle-free life. The village shops, equipped with the new system, have been witnessing an impressive crowd holding out debit and credit cards in their hands.

From smallest items like buying a toffee to the household groceries, all purchases are cashless transactions, attracting people throughout the day. "Earlier, I used to go to Najafgarh, almost 15 kilometres from my village, to meet the daily requirements.

But now, I am getting the facility in my own village. The most important part is that our village has created history by becoming the first village to go cashless," said Dhir Singh, a villager.

The shop owners, too, have a reason to celebrate as their businesses have witnessed sudden increase as they do not have to rely on traditional barter exchanges and don't have to offer credits to customers, thanks to the digital mode of payments.

"Earlier, a majority of the people were purchasing goods on credit but after the introduction of the new system, 100 percent payment is being received. The system has also minimised pressure of maintaining and carrying cash for payments. Besides this, the move has also pulled up customers who were dependent on other markets and with that, our business transactions have also gone up," said Somarani, a shop owner.

Though the villagers have claimed to enjoy the facility but the implementation of it has not been an easy task for various departments of the state government and the banks.

A one month's hectic exercise and a well-organised training of villagers and shop owners have helped immensely in the implementation of the project. The SDM of the area herself has monitored the whole process following which the project was successfully implemented.

"Initially, it was a distant dream as majority of the villagers had neither Aadhaar cards nor bank accounts. To initiate the process, Aadhaar cards were opened initially and based on that, bank accounts of villagers were opened. With the help of the district administration staff, both Aadhaar and bank accounts were linked.

With successful enrollment of at least one family member of each house of the village, training camps were organised to make the village aware of the system. The show-owners were trained to use POS machines and the whole system was linked with the banks," said Sanjeev Kumar Bhatia, manager of Punjab National Bank.