Dantewada district gets Prime Minister’s award for converting Palnar into a cashless village

NEW DELHI: Dantewada district magistrate Saurabh Kumar on Friday received the Prime Minister’s award in the category of excellence in innovation for converting Naxal-hit Palnar village of Chhattisgarh into a cashless village post demonetisation. The village that has so far witnessed 23 encounters and deaths of 16 policemen and five villagers in Left Wing Extremism is located 450 km south of the capital city of Raipur. The village is not yet covered by mobile connectivity.

But after the November 8 demonetisation of high-value notes, Kumar and his team managed to procure fibre and bandwidth from Essar Steel under its corporate social responsibility to create a free wi-fi zone of two and half square km area to kick start digital payments in the village market that houses 14 shops. This village is now connected digitally though it has no cellular connectivity even now.

As much as 60% of the transactions in the village are now cashless with one cycle tyre shop owner in the village upgrading his business to motorcycle tyre repairing, according to Kumar, a 2009 batch IAS officer.

ET Magazine had visited this south Bastar village just a week after the PM’s decision to ban Rs 500 and Rs 1,000. The article reported how villagers from Palnar like Lakhma Vetti and Hidiya Oyam among others had faced a challenge of traveling 22 km to deposit their cash in Chhattisgarh Gramin Bank branch at Kirandul.

District Magistrate Kumar has acknowledged that the ET Magazine article inspired him to think differently to remonetise Palnar. “Many people of Dantewada itself did not know about Palnar. ET Magazine’s report on demonetisation first put the village into prominence,” he added.