Embracing digital economy may face resistance from the urban classes, but farmers, it seems, are embracing it in a big way. The story of farmers in Gujarat paying digitally for purchase of fertilisers was used by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to blunt the case against rural India not yet ready to go cashless.
"I have been told that GNFC or Gujarat Narmada Valley Fertilizers & Chemicals Limited, which primarily manufactures fertilizers, has installed a thousand PoS machines for sale of fertilizers for the convenience of farmers and in just a few days 35 thousand farmers were sold 5 lakh sacs of fertilizers on digital payment and this was accomplished in only two weeks! And the interesting fact is that compared to last year the fertilizer sales of GNFC have gone up by 27 percent," he said in his radio address, Mann Ki Baat, on Sunday.
"During the past few days, the cashless transactions, or cashless trading has increased by 200 to 300%," he said, as if to prove a point.
GNFC is a company jointly promoted by the Gujarat government and Gujarat State Fertilisers & Chemicals Ltd. (GSFC).
The company reported net profit of Rs 165 crore on sales of Rs 1,461 crore for the second quarter ended September 30, 2016.
The share price of GNFC was trading at Rs 208 on Monday at around 10.47 am on the BSE.
The move should also be seen in the context of bankers and analysts saying that the cash crunch is here to stay for another four-five weeks at least, making it difficult for people, especially farmers in view of the not-so-wide banking network in rural India.
The Modi government has been claiming success in its efforts to nudge Indians towards cashless transactions and has been announcing incentives to achieve the objective. The latest set of sops — Lucky Grahak Yojana for consumers and Digi-Dhan Vyapar Yojana for merchants — were announced last week.
The first draw of the Lucky Grahak Yojana to provide a cash back of Rs 1,000 to 15,000 consumers every day for the next 100 days will be launched on December 25 in New Delhi, followed by a similar exercise in 100 different cities over the next 100 days until March.
