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@Evening: 🆙 The Rise Of Digital India That Was Once Thought Not Possible By A Finance Minister
1. What's New: 📰 Catch-up
AAP has 10 days to pay back Rs 163.62 crore, which it used for political advertisements in the name of government advertising.
The under-construction Mumbai Trans Harbour Link will be open for traffic in November this year.
A Hindu temple in Australia's Melbourne was attacked by Khalistan supporters and defaced with anti-India graffiti.
The centre has cracked down on six YouTube channels for peddling fake news.
The NHAI is making efforts to identify accident-prone stretches and blackspots on highways.
The Defence Ministry initiates steps to procure new water jet fast-attack craft for the Indian Navy.
2. Twitter Think: 📱 Digital India begins with believing in India
Here's a cheeky tweet just a day after the PM-chaired Cabinet gave its nod to an incentive scheme to promote RuPay debit cards and low-value BHIM-UPI transactions (person-to-merchant) for this FY.
The tweet refers to comments by a former finance minister of India, where he was underestimating the ability of "the poor lady" at a "village fair" to accept payments digitally.
About six years later, digital payment, thought impossible in a village setting by the former minister, is close to being the norm.
Whether it's Re 1 or Rs 1,000, UPI payments have been the way to go.
Some would even say at this point that dealing in cash is more inconvenient, requiring frequent ATM visits and struggles for change.
UPI payments touched a record high of Rs 12.82 lakh crore in December 2022.
BHIM-UPI transactions have registered a year-on-year growth of 106 per cent, rising from 2,233 crore in FY21 to 4,597 crore in FY22.
Yet, bizarrely, a journalist recently took up news space to write how in India she had to constantly queue up at the local ATM to "withdraw the cash required for nearly every purchase...," putting India in the bracket of "cash-based economies."
3. Word Watch: 📚 Reform Nation by Gautam Chikermane
The book Reform Nation: From the Constraints of P.V. Narasimha Rao to the Convictions of Narendra Modi traces exactly three decades of India's economic reforms journey, from the reboot in July 1991 through July 2021.
This spotlighted period featured six successive governments under five prime ministers, from P V Narasimha Rao to Narendra Modi.
"It captures and analyses each aspect of this journey, the constraints and convictions of each government as it treaded the challenging path of reforms," reads the description by publisher HarperCollins Publishers India.
The author Gautam Chikermane is a vice president at Observer Research Foundation (ORF), a think tank based in the Indian capital.
Chikermane, whose areas of research are economics, politics, foreign policy, and the Mahabharata, is also an occasional contributor to Swarajya.
The book launch on 6 January in New Delhi featured, besides the author, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, EAC-PM Chairman Dr Bibek Debroy, former deputy chairman of the Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia, ORF president Samir Saran, and Professor Shamika Ravi, among others.
4. Picture Speaks: 📷 A young Narendra with 'Narendranath'
Pictured is then future prime minister of India Narendra Modi in a discussion with friends after paying a tribute to Swami Vivekananda.
Today is the birth anniversary of spiritual leader and reformer Swami Vivekananda — born Narendranath Datta.
The day is celebrated as National Youth Day.
"#SwamiVivekananda was a philosophical influence on Modi's efforts to awaken national pride," 'Modi Archive' says in a tweet.
Today in Swarajya, articles on Swami Vivekananda by Aravindan Neelakandan and Jaideep Mazumdar. Happy reading!
5. Culture Cutlet: 🏏 On this day, an Indian cricketing feat to remember!
This day in 1964, Indian spinner Bapu Nadkarni bowled a record 21 maiden overs (131 balls) on the trot against England in a test match in Chennai.
Nadkarni was a left-arm spinner, bowling at the Nehru (Corporation) Stadium, Madras.
His bowling figures looked like this: 32-27-5-0
Nadkarni had an astonishing career economy of 1.67 runs per over.
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