Relevance: Mains: G. S paper II: Governance: Education
Introduction:
There have been numerous initiatives taken by the government to spread financial literacy in the
country: National Strategy for Financial Education (NSFE):
As per the National Strategy for Financial Education, the key elements of financial literacy
module should be as follows:
- To understand the main financial products that one might need in the course of one’s life like the “bank accounts, insurance, retirement savings plans and securities market investments like stocks, bonds and mutual funds.”
- Getting to learn about the fundamental financial concepts like investment return, compound
interest, annuity, diversification, present and future value of money, so on and so forth. - Being more aware of financial risks and prospects and developing skills and self-reliance to gain profit from them.
- Making well informed financial choices about “saving, spending, insurance, investing and
managing debt throughout one’s life.”
Financial Literacy Project:
- This is a central bank (RBI) endeavor that aims to disseminate information regarding its basic banking concepts to schools, colleges, economically weaker sections residing in the rural and urban areas, senior citizens, defense personals, and many more in the specific target group. Under this initiative, RBI organizes trips of school and college students to the RBI headquarters and also conducts banking and insurance related quizzes in schools (for classes VII to XIV) to create awareness about general economy and bring about financial literacy. It also creates modules on General Indian Economics for the same purpose. There is also a Financial Literacy Week that is observed by RBI to create awareness and understanding on key topics every year “through a focused campaign.”
Digital Literacy And its Importance
- The modern day technical advancement and large scale consumption of mobile phones as
the consumer market, India is a country where awareness and literacy regarding the digital aspect of communication is utmost necessary. Computers, internet and mobile phones have become a seminal part of our existence. Thus, the degree of familiarity with the technological and digital platform decides how effectively can the communication of content, ideas, information and entertainment takes place in this generation take place.
Importance
- It is imperative to develop an effective and competent framework of digital organisation, since the world is only a click away and information has been digitised and compressed. To get ready for the surge of digital transformation, India needs to build its digital skills, beginning from digital awareness and education of its citizens.
- To stay well-connected with the world and be in effective communicating developmental ideas and translating the vision of rapid growth into reality, digital literacy is a must in today’s world.
Steps taken by the Government to Strengthen Digital Literacy in India:
- Under the Digital India campaign, the government has taken numerous initiatives to bring
about digital literacy in the country. Some of the endeavours are:
Digital Saksharta Abhiyan (DISHA):
- National Digital Literacy Mission (NDLM) Scheme has been initiated by the government in
order to impart IT training to citizens who are not literate in the IT sphere. This scheme aims at making target groups like the Angawadis, ASHA workers, sanctioned ration dealers, etc IT literate and enable them to effectively and actively participate in the national developmental course of action, by augmenting their livelihoods through digital literacy.
Digitize India Platform (DIP):
- This is an initiative of the Union Government under the Digital India Programme. DIP is an
interface that provides digitisation services for scanned images of documents or physical copies for any organisation. This scheme aims at creating a digital repository of all existing content, which includes the certificates and degrees of people, in various formats and media in a digitised pattern.
Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT):
- DBT was brought underway with the objective to identify beneficiaries and accurately target them by directly transferring funds into their account, doing away with any sort of middlemen in the process.
- It is an initiative to reform the delivery system of the government and ensure efficient, effective, non duplicable, faster and simpler transfer of information/funds in order to achieve the goal of “Maximum Governance, Minimum Government”. DBT promotes greater transparency and lesser frauds so as to make the government accountable and inspire more confidence of the people in governance.
AADHAR and AADHAAR Enabled Payment System:
- AADHAR platform is one of the main pillars of the Digital India Platform. AADHAR number or the unique identity number is generated by using a person’s biometric specifications.
- This platform has the largest biometrics based recognition system, and is “a strategic policy tool for social and financial inclusion, public sector delivery reforms,” to “promote hassle-free people-centric governance.”
- Similarly, the AADHAR enabled payment system lets the customer use his/her AADHAR card as the identity proof and link the bank to AADHAR to carry digital payment activities. This model brings into force “financial inclusion”.
Saugamya Bharat Abhiyan:
- It is a pan-India flagship campaign that is also known as the Accessible India Campaign. This
campaign aims at achieving “universal accessibility” for people with diabilties in ordre for them to have an access to equal opportunity, independent living and inclusive socio-economic development.
AGRIMARKET App:
- This app has been created to enable the farmers to stay updated with the crop prices in
order to ensure best market for the sale of their crop and assess the market conditions beforehand. This app automatically traces the location of the farmer through GPS and fetched the market prices of the crops within a range of 50km. the app has been helpful in preventing the farmers from carrying out “distress sale.”
Bharat Interface for Money (BHIM):
- This app makes the bank transactions simple, swift and uncomplicated. It enables bank to bank direct transfer, which is done using a mobile phone.
Cyber Swachhta Kendra:
- Under this initiative of the government, the main task of the centre is to quarantine and safeguard the cyber space by spotting botnet infections and subsequently notify the end-users to prevent further damage. This falls within the purview of ‘National Cyber Security Policy’ that aims to ensure clean cyber ecosystem iindo8.
Vittiya Saksharta Abhiyan (VISAKA)
- Launched by the Ministry of Human Resource Development, VISIKA is said to be “biggest digital transformation of country after Independence”. The principle of the ‘Vittiya Saksharta Abhiyan’ is to energetically connect the Higher Education Institutions and their students and encourage all payers and payees to use a “digitally enabled cashless economic system”5 for their fund transfer.
Conclusion
- To keep abreast of the evolutionary shifts that the modern age technical innovations bring with itself, it is necessary that individuals are provided with apt resources and information that would create awareness and make practical use effective and easy.
- Educating people about various facets of socio-economic and developmental concepts
is a step taken towards efficient and productive governance. The concept of financial and digital literacy is important in the present day scenario and India has already started moving towards realizing the value the digital and financial transformation and taping into the benefits from them.