Since Prime Minister Narendra Modi demonetized the 500 and 1000 rupee notes, many people are facing difficulties in withdrawing or exchanging the cash. The situation is much bad in the rural India. But in one little village in Gujarat, people only do cashless transactions and they are not even affected by the demonetization.
Akodara, a village in the Sabarkantha district of Gujarat, has become the first digitalized village in India. This is located 90 km away from the financial capital of the state, Ahmedabad. Akodara was adopted by ICICI bank in 2015. Since then, the village slowly started doing cashless transactions and now everything has become completely digitalized.
Many transactions happen through SMS banking where the money gets transferred from buyer’s account to the seller’s account within few seconds. All the 250 households have a bank account. 1036 adults of the 1191 total population has the savings bank accounts. The village also has an ATM but is is now being used mostly by the neighbouring villagers. Akodara villagers, who has old notes, are xchaniging their notes at the bank. The village also has a website called http://akodara-digitalvillage.in/.
