Next time just do not ignore or disconnect a call coming on your mobile phone from an unknown number. The person on the other side may be no other than Jharkhand Chief Minister Raghubar Das!
Call it a post-facto effect of demonetisation or de-facto step to relate the cashless saga all over, the scenario has roped in the Chief Minister with an obvious intention, to reach out to more and more people with higher degree of effectiveness.
The latest drive in this order is a collective handiwork of Information and Technology Department and Information and Public Relation Department. The Chief Minister through a pre-recorded message is heard convincing the person on the other side about good effects of going cashless.
“….dear citizen…you should pay your bills and taxes in cashless manner more and more….also purchases should be done through debit or credit cards…this will save you from exploitations of several kinds,” says the CM in his 31 seconds long, soft and caring message before hurling another suggestion urging people to propagate the idea of cashless mode of transactions among ten or more other people.
This new initiative from his side is an extension of steps the CM has taken following the demonetisation. A couple of days ago he gifted a prepaid card in a marriage function to a couple. The Government has also followed up with numerous steps that include making as many as 29 blocks cashless in no time and looking forward to make the State cashless by March, 2017.
“At the behest of the Chief Minister’s Office we prepared a plan and contacted all telecom operators functional in the States. All the private operators and BSNl have been given the message to play up. As of now nearly two crore such calls have been made by different operators to their respective customers in the State,” said Umesh Prasad Sah, Director of Information Technology Directorate on Thursday.
The operators have been told to contact their subscribers one by one in cyclic manner and not to repeat the number on which the call is made once. “It is all about spreading awareness among the common people about cashless drive and its benefits. We thought the message could be conveyed in the best possible manner by the Chief Minister himself. We prepared the text and handed it over to the IT Department for making it possible,” said a senior official of the Public Relation Department.
It is also being learnt that at the CMO’s level, the task to push the cashless drive is perceived as one of the toughest considering lower level of IT penetration in rural pockets of the State. However, the Government has taken it as an opportunity and when the required infrastructure like handsome coverage of Aadhaar is there, the drive has been launched all out.