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Why it's barter or cash in this 'cashless' Ambala village -Vinod Kumar

-The Indian Express

Three villages, with a combined population of about 5,000, have only one bank and no ATM.

Ambala:
Chamanlal, 28, a barber in Bara village, does not have a debit card and has never seen a point-of-sale (PoS) machine. He charges Rs 20 for a haircut and Rs 10 for a shave — all in cash. He is among the few in the village who has a smartphone, but has never used it to make e-payments. He does, however, use it to watch videos.

Just three days ago, local MP Rattan Lal Kataria (BJP) declared that Bara and the neighbouring villages of Durali and Ugara in Ambala district had become “cashless”. He made the announcement at an event organised by the gram panchayat of Ugara village.

But Chamanlal says he is not aware about the new tag. “I am taking cash from my customers,” he says. “How can our village go cashless? Nobody has any cards here with which to make online transactions”.

The three villages, with a combined population of about 5,000, have only one bank — an Allahabad Bank branch. There is no ATM in the area.

Bara has a population of about 2,500 — half of them are literate. There are around 20 shops, none of which have a PoS machine. But the sarpanch, Vikas Behgal, has ordered shopkeepers to stop accepting cash. He has told villagers to go back to the barter system till they are able to make cashless transactions.

“They should accept cash through mobile banking and e-wallets till they get PoS machines. We have asked people to look for alternative ways of making payments, such as barter system, if they don’t have access to cashless modes of payment,” says Behgal, a businessman in his 30s.

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