Vittiya Saksharata Abhiyan

Union Minister for Human Resource Development, Shri Prakash Javadekar launched ‘Vittiya Saksharata Abhiyan’ in New Delhi today.Pursuant to the Honorable Prime Minister’s appeal to youth in ‘Mann Ki Baat’ for creating awareness among people about digital economy and cashless modes of transactions, Union HRD Minister appealed to the faculty and especially young students to come forward and join ‘Vittiya Saksharata Abhiyan’ to encourage, create awareness and motivate all people around them to use a digitally enabled cashless economic system for transfer of fund.

The Union HRD Minister launched a webpage where students can register themselves, give continuous feedback and suggestions on the initiative as well as upload the progress of their work. He cited different modes of digital payment like Pre-Paid Card, Debit Card/RuPay, Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD), Mobile Wallet, Aadhar Enabled Payment System (AEPS), Unified Payment Interface (UPI), also Point of Sale (Physical/Virtual) and appealed to all students to ‘Go Digital’. He also highlighted that these digital platforms are easy to use, convenient, secure and anytime accessible by anyone anywhere.

India is on the cusp of a major financial revolution. As we shift from a cash-dependent to a cashless economy, we look forward to better social equity, availability of more resources for development work through higher revenue collection, eradication of counterfeit currency, a reduction in illegal transactions and a curb on black money. The purpose of the `Vittiya Saksharta Abhiyan’ is to actively engage the youth/ students of Higher Education Institutions to encourage and motivate all payers and payees to use a digitally enabled cashless economic system for transfer of funds.

India is undergoing transformational shift towards digital economy and youth should not only witness the change but also proactively participate in it by becoming agents of change. Technology can be leveraged to bring financial digital literacy and a step forward toward digital economy. Government intends that higher education institutes receive nothing in cash (fee/fines/deposits) and pay nothing in cash (wages/salaries/vendor payments) and develop a cashless campus (covering shops/canteens/services). Through the portal it aims at roping in young students, who can adapt to technology easily and quickly, to educate at home and in their surroundings to create digital financial literacy.