Social revolution in a JAM: 

Social revolution in a JAM:

Context

There is a difference between equality in the digital space and empowering Indians in the bricks-and-mortar world.

Introduction

• Just like GST (goods and services tax) created one tax, one market, one India, the PMJDY and the JAM revolution can link all Indians into one common financial, economic, and digital space.
• No Indian will be outside the mainstream.

Role of JAM in achieving Social Revolution and major developments

• JAM, deriving from Jan Dhan, Aadhaar and Mobile, combines bank accounts for the poor, who barely had the money to deposit in them, direct transfer of benefits into these accounts and the facility of making financial payments through mobile phones.
• Aadhaar is the pivot here, allowing the government to ensure that benefits reach the poor and enabling them to make payments through ordinary mobile phones. For furthering the latter the government has devised the Bharat Interface for Money (BHIM) app.
• These developments are a “social revolution”, perhaps alluding to the feature that the poor are the most direct beneficiaries.

Role of JAM beyond Bank Accounts

• Eliminating leakage in the transfer of welfare payments and enabling the poor to have bank accounts are worthy objectives.
• But claims of having achieved inclusion by operationalizing the JAM trinity appear somewhat exaggerated.
• A financial inclusion, in the sense of everyone having a bank account and access to reliable and free electronic payments system, is not the same as economic inclusion.
• JAM functions in the digital space while much of our life is lived in the brick and mortar world. In the latter space, we have seen very little improvement, not just recently but since economic reforms were launched over 25 years ago.

Focusing on Capabilities

• Moving from production to being, JAM cannot even claim equalization, leave alone empowerment.
• We would have achieved a social revolution when we have equipped all individuals with the essential capabilities.
• This happens when a society has, at a minimum, universal health and education infrastructure accessible to all.

Achieving Social Revolution

• Given the extraordinary challenges faced by India in the provision of public infrastructure ranging from health and education to drainage and sewerage, the claim made for JAM is breathtaking in its simplicity.
• JAM ensures seamless transfer of welfare payments and facilitates the making payments in real time. These are worthy objectives, but fall well short of the social revolution the honourable minister claims for them.
• Our social revolution will arrive when all Indians are empowered through an equality of capabilities. This would require committing resources to building the requisite social and physical infrastructure and investing time to govern its functioning.
• JAM may have achieved equality in the digital space but is far from having empowered Indians in spheres in which they are severely deprived at present, an empowerment that they clearly value.
• The government has leveraged IT smartly in operationalizing JAM but the possibility of replicating this to transform the ecosystem of production for firms and the ecosystem of living for individuals is limited.

Conclusion

• Private investment in India has declined steadily over the past few years.
• But now even growth appears to be stalling.
• The latest GDP figures from the Central Statistics Office show growth in the first quarter of the current financial year to be lower than the average for 2016-17.
• Data actually point to a steadily slowing economy with growth having been successively lower in the past five quarters.
• There appears to be a mismatch between the government’s own assessment of its policies and the private sector’s valuation of their worth.
• The jubilation over JAM is an example of this.