Government of India has initiated numerous steps to combat the scourge of Corruption and Black Money in the last two and a half years. The Union cabinet had approved a slew of initiatives in February 2016 to encourage digital payments and a transition to less-cash economy in a strategic manner.
It would be recalled that towards this end, the Government had created awareness in terms of opening Jan Dhan accounts, giving a statutory basis for Aadhar, implementation of Directs Benefits Transfer, introduction of RuPay Cards and Voluntary Disclosure Scheme for unaccounted money. Demonetization of 500 and 1000 Rs. notes was another important milestone in this endeavour. Following demonetization, there has been a spurt in the digital payments across the country and both the volume and amount of money transacted through digital methods has seen manifold increase since November 9th
What are these Yojanas?
NITI Aayog announces the launch of the schemes to give cash awards to consumers and merchants who utilize digital payment instruments for personal consumption expenditures. The scheme specially focuses on bringing the poor, lower middle class and small businesses into the digital payment fold.
The primary aim of these schemes is to encourage digital transactions so that electronic payments are adopted by all sections of the society, especially the poor and the middle class. It has been designed keeping in mind all sections of the society and their usage patterns. For instance, the poorest of poor will be eligible for rewards by using USSD.
The scheme will become operational with the first draw on 25th December, 2016 (as a Christmas gift to the nation) leading up to a Mega Draw on Babasaheb Ambedkar Jayanti on 14th April 2017.
Who are the Beneficiaries?
Lucky Grahak Yojana [Consumers]:
- Daily reward of Rs 1000 to be given to 15,000 lucky Consumers for a period of 100 days;
- Weekly prizes worth Rs 1 lakh, Rs 10,000 and Rs. 5000 for Consumers who use the alternate modes of digital Payments
- This will include all forms of transactions viz. UPI, USSD, AEPS and RuPay Cards but will for the time being exclude transactions through Private Credit Cards and Digital Wallets.
- Prizes for Merchants for all digital transactions conducted at Merchant establishments
- Weekly prizes worth Rs. 50,000, Rs 5,000 and Rs. 2,500
- c) Mega Draw on 14th of April – Ambedkar Jayanti
- 3 Mega Prizes for consumers worth Rs 1 cr, 50 lakh, 25 lakh for digital transactions between 8th November, 2016 to 13thApril, 2017 to be announced on 14th April, 2017
- 3 Mega Prizes for merchants worth Rs 50 lakhs, 25 lakh, 12 lakh for digital transactions between 8th November, 2016 to 13th April, 2017 to be announced on 14th.
To ensure that the focus of the scheme is on small transactions (entered into by common people), incentives shall be restricted to transactions within the range of Rs 50 and Rs 3000. All transactions between consumers and merchants; consumers and government agencies and all AEPS transactions will be considered for the incentive scheme.
The winners shall be identified through a random draw of the eligible Transaction IDs [which are generated automatically as soon as the transaction is completed] by software to be especially developed by NPCI for this purpose.
