A majority of India’s population belongs to the rural. Lack of awareness of digital and financial literacy, especially among the rural population is a major challenge in the country, more so in light of the Government’s plans to make India a cashless economy. People of rural India have always been apprehensive about anything that is even remotely ‘digital’ and find it hard to accept the recent trends that have made the digital medium of financial transactions so popular. Finance management has always been a tough technique to master and with the recent development of strategies and tactics, complications have increased manifold. Even though the concept of financial inclusion has spread its branches in the rural areas, not much of it has had any effect due to inefficient financial literacy.
Every year a large chunk of the young population moves from the rural areas to the urban ones in search of better education and employment opportunities. The youth is the most advanced generation today, and if an area becomes deprived of the young population, it will drastically go down the development slope and will end nowhere. The rural areas are in crucial need of better education and employment services and opportunities for all sections of the population. The women and children do not have much knowledge of net banking & e-wallets and hence the apprehensions about them keep the people away from bringing such technologies into use. Imparting people with knowledge of the system would automatically build trust about it in their minds.
Thus, there is an urgent need to create awareness regarding basics of digital finance services among the citizens, especially in rural areas.
Through the project “SARALsamudaay’ supported by L&T Hydrocarbon Engineering (LTHE), an effort is put in towards conducting awareness sessions on the said subject so as to enable the rural people to access and take advantage of the available services. In tune with this, a total of over hundred women and youth girls from the villages of Ropa and Mastupura in Waghodiya, Vadodara have been imparted relevant training and skills.