A timely push for the digital rupee

Moving to the digital rupee — India’s central bank digital currency (CBDC) — for subsidy payments, a course the Centre is considering, could deliver multiple benefits. For one, this will help familiarise large chunks of the population with the rupee’s digital form, which remains rather “niche” at present. And, as this newspaper has reported, given that it can be tied to a specific end-use and deadline, the government can ensure against the abuse of the transferred amount as also take care of any lag in consumption, which can be the case with cash transfers to accounts. Then, there are the cost savings and transaction efficiencies — in terms of currency printing, storage, handling and damage losses avoided—that will accrue from such a transition.

The impact of such moves on the digital currency space is no less significant. CBDCs have become a geopolitical and security imperative amid the rising weaponisation of global reserve currencies and the explosion of private digital currencies, including cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. CBDCs — the digital imprint of physical fiat currencies — offer stability and certainty for cross-border transactions in such scenarios. From the security point of view, they carry some of the benefits of decentralised digital currencies without the attendant risks, such as becoming instruments of illegal transactions and financing.

Against this backdrop, attempts to expand use cases — subsidy payments being a good example — are an important step forward; the economy can neither lock itself away from the gains of such innovations nor suffer vulnerabilities to the risks emerging from these.

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