Sydney: External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said that India is moving ahead to record the largest number of cashless transactions in the world. While speaking at the ‘Raisina@Sydney’ Business Breakfast, the minister said that the UPI recorded the largest number of cashless transactions in the world and that there’s been a kind of a technology leapfrogging in the psyche of people. Jaishankar also stated that digital governance has now become the basic mechanism today to do socioeconomic delivery.
Raisina@Sydney Business Breakfast was organized jointly by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) and India’s Observer Research Foundation (ORF) at the InterContinental Hotel in Sydney.
“The Digital world was ensuring the integrity of delivery and transactions that would not have been possible equally on the financial side because we encouraged people to open bank accounts, sometimes bank accounts with no money. But we were, again, during the same period, put money into the bank accounts of 415,000,000 people who are the lowest income in the country. And if you ask me, how did you get through COVID, I cannot overstate the importance of financially supporting people and feeding people and ensuring that this works on the ground,” he said.
“India is trying to demonstrate that the country can construct a social, comprehensive social welfare system, even at the scale of income. And the scale of income is USD 2,000 per capita,” he said.
The minister also talked about the social programs, and said that in the last four years, India has been able to cover about 500 million people in health schemes, about the same number covered by pension schemes.
“There was a program to replace firewood with cooking gas. And the cooking gas, the initial lot of cooking gas, you get free of cost. Now, that program is as big as 80 million people. We have a housing program, a housing program. We have already delivered 30 million houses, and at five people, a family in India, which means 150,000,000 people have been covered,” Jaishankar said.
