ATM FOR ILLITERATE PEOPLE - NEED OF DIGITAL INDIA

Our dynamic prime minister when launched Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Youjna nobody has dreamed for the huge success of the scheme expect prime minister himself. The task was to open an account for every household in our country. The scheme was a big bang success with participate of all stakeholders. The scheme was later followed by PMJJBY, PMSBY & APY. These were the first time when somebody has implemented social security schemes on ground level in our country at such a large scale. Around 21 crores accounts have been opened till now under PMJDY and almost same number of ATM cards have been issued but the usage of these cards is a challenge as most of the customer in this scheme belongs to poor, illiterate and rural areas who does not know how to use the cards or how much safe it is ( a large number of frauds has happened after PMJDY as people are receiving calls asking their ATM details along with CVV number and PIN code). All such problems can be solved with implementation of bio-metric ATM machines.

Every illiterate person in India can do two things – put his thumb impression and differentiate between currency notes. It should be like – any illiterate person goes to atm, put his thumb impression which links to his bank account already linked to aadhar number, and screen may show notes of 500/100. Only he has to touch the note  which he want to withdraw and machine should disburse the amount. We already have infrastructure and required technology for the same. One more suggestion is to start inter-bank cash deposit which will definitely make digital India a reality. Till now we can withdraw money from any bank’s ATM, then why cannot we deposit money in the same atm/ cash deposit machine. Till date banks are accepting cash for their own bank’s customers irrespective of branch, it should be modified and banks should accept cash for other bank’s customers also. The implementation of the same is also very easy as here also we have infrastructure and required technology along with database.  Only hurdle is our willingness to take risk and some govt. / rbi rules which needs to be tackled at policy maker level.