When e-payment has been the buzzword after the demonetisation, the shocker is e-transactions per day post demonetisation in the bouquet of e-services made available by the Odisha Government has shown a big fall of around 27 per cent.
According to the data available with the Electronic Transaction Aggregate and Analysis layer (E-TAAl), the number of e-transactions in the State for the whole period of January-December 2016 has been over 3.59 crore whereas the number of such transactions during the post-demonetisation month (November 9-Dececember 13) has been around 23 lakh only.
A detailed look at the data therefore shows that the number of e-transactions per day in Odisha in the year January-December 13, 2016 has been over 1.04 lakh. But the number has fallen to only around 76,279 per day in the demonetisation month (November 9-December 13). The result: e-transactions per 1,000 population in Odisha in the post-demonetisation month has fallen to around 55 from a high of around 850 in January-November 8, 2016 (means around 85 per 1,000 per month prior to demonetisation).
Significantly, the Odisha Government has put an array of services ranging from civic bill payments to paddy procurement on electronic platform. Altogether, a high of 97 services in the State have been switched on to electronic (online) mode. And when cash crunch is weighing down hard, online bill payments in civic bodies, online paddy selling or online vehicle registration could have eased the stress on people in the State. Alas, it’s not the reality in the State as data shows a big dip in people availing of such online government services.
Interestingly, post demonetisation, the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) has seen a windfall in holding tax collection given that such collections grew almost by around two fold, but most in cash payments than in online filing. Moreover, when distress paddy selling has been reported in many western and southern districts in the State, the online paddy registration to sell paddy at Government-owned mandis also showed a dip during the period. However, the number of online filings by citizens in getting birth/death certificates and a host of such similar services didn’t show any dip in the demonetisation month.
What assumes significance here is Odisha didn’t figure even in the top-10 e-transacted States. While among the neighbouring States, Odisha is only ahead of Bihar and Jharkhand, and in the BIMARU (Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh) category, Odisha with an e-transaction services share of 0.36 per cent of total services could stay ahead of Bihar and Jharkhand only.
Moreover, when Odisha is vying to woo big-ticket private investments, it needs to shore up its e-governance arena by putting more services on e-platform. Reason: When Odisha could provide e-platform to only 97 services, neighbouring Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal and Chhattisgarh have provided a whopping around 250, 176 and 118 services, respectively.