Almost 6 Months back, Hunsur taluka’s Gavadagere village was selected to be transformed into a digital village. Coming to the present time: Cash still stays the favored mode of transactions in the village. This is the situation in spite of the fact that over 90% of inhabitants has fundamental bank accounts, owns Rupay cards, and has admission to free wireless local area network (WLAN). When media gave a visit to the hobli head office and communicated with administrators on factors for the delayed progress in digital evolution, they claimed, “The biggest hurdle is the mindset of the inhabitants.”
“People are disinclined to the transformation to digital methods and commercial establishments are not prepared to install point-of-sale or card-swiping machines,” an official of revenue department claimed to the media. The village has an ATM, a bank named Vijaya Bank, a fuel refilling station, a post office (sub-branch), high school, PU college, textile shops, medical stores, bakeries, cement shops, farmers’ association, self-help groups, and grocery stores. Almost 700 farmers have licenses of tobacco barn and their income is Rs 16 Crore each year.
GS Hala Nayak and Hemanth Kumar, business reporters linked to Vijaya Bank, claim that people are still unwilling to go digital, although the bank is trying every possible course to promote cashless payments. Fascinatingly, people make full usage of free Internet for non-banking reasons, such as social media via Facebook, WhatsApp, and to play online games on their handsets. Debit cards are utilized just to remove cash from ATMs.
B T Kumar, who owns a medical shop for 18 Years and is eager for PoS machines, uses free Wi-Fi to make transactions to medicine providers. A shamiyana shop proprietor, Annaji Rao, claimed he has an account in the bank as well as debit card but barely utilizes it. B Krishnamurthy, linked to Lakshmi Srinivasa Flour Mill that provides flour of maida to grocery shops and bakeries in Hunsur in almost 2 dozen villages and KR Nagar, says to the media that his users feel unconfident and are anxious of losing cash in the form of transaction cost or service charge.