Nandan Nilekani, the man behind Aadhar has been asked by Union Ministry of Finance, Arun Jaitley to advise the government on digital payments, especially on linking governmental banking services directly to its employees, including the Army, judiciary and paramilitary forces.
Sources told Newsd that Nilekani, who contested the 2014 Lok Sabha unsuccessfully on a Congress ticket from South Bangalore, is likely to accept the role and join C as Principal Advisor to the Modi government.
The role is slated to be called ‘Digital Advisor’ in official circles.
The ex-CEO of Infosys had recently, in an interview to NDTV, came out in support of the demonetisation move by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
“Demonetisation would see a massive activation of digitisation of financial services in the country, although there will be some amount of ‘short term pain’ in the coming weeks,” he said.
“What would have taken another 3-6 years to get rolled out, I now believe because of the urgency of the matter, will happen in 3-6 months,” Nilekani told NDTV.
“The more important thing is when the economy becomes formal, when everybody’s financial transactions are digitised.”
“India is going to go from data poor to data rich and that will make it more and more difficult for people to do dishonest things or to be outside the system. You will reduce the amount of black money in the system,” the 61-year-old said.
