Your thumb will now act as your bank: PM Modi

In a renewed push to turn India into a cashless economy, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday launched an Aadhaarbased mobile payment application that requires only the user’s thumb impression to operate.

Modi named the new app BHIM, short for Bharat Interface for Money, and dedicated it to Dalit icon Babasahib Bhim Rao Ambedkar. “Dr Ambedkar’s mantra was to work for uplifting the poor, and the biggest power of technology lies in empowering them,” he said at the DigiDhan Mela at Talkatora Stadium here.

The Prime Minister said the BHIM app can be used on all mobile devices, be it a smartphone or a feature phone costing `1,000-`2,000. “There is no need for Internet connectivity, one only needs the thumb. There was a time when illiterate people were called ‘angutha chchap’. But times have changed, and your thumb is your bank now. It has become your identity,” he added. Modi said the government was also working towards launching a new security feature that would enable monetary transactions without the use of a phone or the Internet. Observers see a two-pronged strategy behind naming the new governmentsponsored mobile wallet after Ambedkar.

A fire broke out at a bakery in Pune on Friday morning, suffocating six workers as the only exit was locked. The three owners of the bakery have been arrested.

Fire brigade officials suspect short-circuit as the cause of the fire at Bakes N cakes, a recently opened bakery on the ground floor of a nine-storey building at Kondhwa. “We got a call at 4.45am. Three fire tenders were sent to the spot,” said a fire official.

When the fire brigade team reached the spot, one of the owners told them that six workers were sleeping on the mezzanine floor of the shop, which was locked.

“By the time the door could be opened, the workers were charred to death,” said the official.