Maharashtra's 'digital village' goes back to cash transactions

A year back, Dhasai village in Murbad made news for being the first village in Maharashtra to be ‘cash-free’, as people made financial transactions using digital payment methods. The muchpraised Dhasai model held out hope of cashless villages. But in three months, things started changing and people have now gone back to using cash. Just what went wrong in Dhasai?

There were simply not enough debit cards to carry the cashless momentum forward. “We had things going well for the first two months, but couldn’t sustain it because banks did not give debit cards to most villagers. If you don’t have debit cards, how do you pay?” asked Swapnil Patkar, president of the Dhasai Shahar Vyapari Association, which had taken the initiative to get POS machines.

Shahrukh Patel, who runs a medical store, said Dhasai was never a cashless village. “There were only a few people with debit cards, the others did not have money since they were daily wage labourers and farmers. The whole cashless thing was just for two months and only a few people who had debit cards used them,” Patel explained.

Patkar claimed while BoB provided them with POS machines for free and didn’t charge any rent, other banks such as Vijaya Bank and the Thane District Coop Bank weren’t keen to provide debit cards to their customers.