50 Days After Demonetisation
Narendra Modi in an open rally asked the citizens to give
him 50 days to fix all the problems that had cropped up after November 8th
demonetisation of old 1000 and 500 rupee bills. Now that we are almost into the
60th day, it only assigns us the liberty to go over and see how far
our PM has succeeded in keeping his words. It is even more interesting if we
too can bundle up his claims of the benefits that one can expect in the long
run out of this demonetisation activity. Never to forget the accusations and
complains of the opposition and see how far their concerns and worries have
turned out to be true. The poor, for whom we suddenly saw a surge in concerns
from various quarters, mostly from the secular and liberal (or are they the
same?) types, need also be revisited if we really want to have an overall
picture of this bold move. So here we go.
One of the primary complain was the inconvenience that
people had to face while trying to withdraw their own money. Agreed, it was inconvenience
for all. No one can deny that people had to wait in queues in banks and ATMs (those
which were by miracle dispensing cash at times) for long hours to carry out
their banking transactions. But that was given when you suddenly take out 80%
of the available cash from the market. Banks were running out of cash as the
supply of required currency from RBI wasn’t matching the demand. The delay in
rolling out new 500 rupee bill came out as the weak link. Change in dimensions
of the new currency also didn’t help the cause. Each one of the ATM machines
had to be recalibrated to dispense new notes. All these arguments and counter arguments are agreed but has the situation improved as promised by our PM?
The other day I was in Mumbai. In the ‘Hind Mata Cloth
Market’ I found a functional SBI ATM with only two people in the queue. Since
it was January 1st I could able to withdraw Rs 4500/- . What interesting
here is the denominations that I got from the ATM. It was equally distributed,
much like how ATMs dispense. I got a single 2000 rupee bill with four 500 bills
and five 100 bills. And this is not an exception. Almost all the ATMs in Mumbai
I found to be working with no or minimal queue. Same is the case in Pune as
well. Almost all ATMs are working now. I don’t see long queues either. I am
also hearing similar feedback from other places too. It mostly appears to be
normal in urban and semi urban areas except may be Tirupathi where one of my
friend claims the situation to be as horrible as it was 50 days back. Though I
would love to gulp down his claims with a kilo of salt, I would still prefer a
second opinion from someone native to that place. I am sure my friend would be
caught with his 'Pants with no innerwear inside' down.
Now let’s see how is the situation in villages, which hold
lot of interest for our liberals. As per the liberals, the ATMs in villages are
still not operational and poor villagers are still suffering. Now, I don’t know
why it makes me laugh like a maniac. It makes me laugh because I don’t know which
village they are referring. I seldom see people in villages going to an ATM to
do their banking. In fact, according to the finance ministry data, about 70%
villages don’t have any ATMs to begin with. SBI, which has a major share in our
rural branches made another interesting revelation. Even before demonetisation,
the rural ATMs used to get a refill once in a fortnight as per the guidelines because the demand for ATM usage is dismal. As records would suggest, it is
only 30% of the ATM money that gets dispensed in average in rural areas. Since
2009 SBI in fact is running a rural program with little or no success to
educate villagers to avail the ATM facility as it is fast, secure and round the
clock. So which villagers these liberals found suffering because of
non-functional ATMs? Yesterday I asked an agitating liberal, if she could let
me know the village name where she found a lot of suffering just because the
lone SBI ATM was non-functional. As expected the outraging liberal was silent
with her response. Making a point is one thing but to behave as if none other
than the liberals who know how a village in India looks like is quite another.
Claiming the existence of hardship in urban areas because of closed down ATMs
can still be accepted but percolating the same rubbish to our villages where
people still believe in their passbook style banking is little rich.
Second biggest abrasion among the liberals is the limit that RBI
has issued on daily and weekly withdrawals. As it stands today, one can
withdraw Rs 4500/- per day from the ATMS and Rs 24000/- per week at the maximum from the banks. If you ask,
that is a lot of money for an average you, me and Haroon Bhai. You don’t
believe? Just look at your monthly expenses of last quarter or maybe six months. Even
Rahul Gandhi would agree with me that 24K is a good amount. After all he not
only managed to survive for 50 days with the Rs 4000/- that he withdrew from
the Parliament Street ATM but also could book the air tickets and hotels for
his new year bash in London. Now since the great RG is on my side, the question
here to the liberals – where is the difficulty with this limit? 24K per week
spells as 96K per month, which again calculates itself to 11 lakh per year. And
as per out Income Tax records, In India there are only 24 lakh people who have
income above 10 lakhs. That 24 lakh would even shrink further if we filter out
those who earn more than 11 lakhs per year. So in a country of billion plus
populace only 20 odd lakh people suffering, even if they are, is a national
tragedy? No wonder why I feel vindicated about me calling these liberals as mindless
whiners. But then, a single Dadri made our entire nation intolerant for our
liberals and here we are talking about the possible hardship of 20 lakh plus people.
That said, I can see the liberal logic here. I agree to the reason why these
liberals are fuming. After all, their eternal love for the last suffering human
on this planet, not just India, is not only legendary but also a proven
sentiment and we must show adequate respect here.
Going back to the promise of our PM and his subsequent claims of curbing
black money and terrorism through demonetisation. I must say, one must analyse the points one by
one.
First let’s tackle the black money part. Looking at the
amount that got deposited, it hardly appears that any black money was left
unattended. After all 95% of the old currency getting into banking system makes
one ask – where is the black money? But before we ask, let’s take a pause and
ponder, what about the remaining 5%? A simple mathematics would tell you, 5 %
of our total demonetised currency is still a huge, huge amount, though not to
the tune that we claim to have stashed in black. Then there are desperate souls
like Mayawati, who being out of any option, have actually deposited huge
amounts in various accounts. Many bankers too have been caught in soliciting
with fraudsters in getting their black money through. Today, even the driver of
Mulayam was found to have hundreds of crores in his account. Many ‘Jan-Dhan’
accounts were also being misused by corrupt syndicates. All these are getting
to the public discourse gradually and I am sure many such dubious transactions will see
the light of the day in due course. I am told, lakhs of ‘Jan-Dhan’ account are already been frozen by the government pending inquiry. Before we come to know, how much
black money has been pushed through out of desperation, it is futile making an
argument, for or against, on the 95% figure alone. There is a big possibility that a lot of the black money that is
already deposited in our banks would ultimately be taken away by the government after investigation. We only
can guess. At this stage it is little premature to debate on these
RBI numbers alone. Another vital point is, the numbers also suggest that a large amount of black money
could also have been invested in real-estate. But that is a given in any
corrupt society. That is precisely why I argued in one of my earlier posts that
there can’t be one single step to arrest corruption in India. There has to be
multiple measures for this to achieve. As Modi himself suggested, unaccounted and
wrongful property is his next target. Demonetisation actually was the first of
the many steps that this government is planning to take.
On taking terrorism to its back foot claim of our PM – well,
it appears little exaggerated at this point at least. That said the stone
pelters in Kashmir suddenly vanished from the scene within two days of
demonetisation. Though the rascals are nothing lesser than the terrorists,
purists (read liberals) may disagree with us calling them outright terrorists. As
it is they mostly are sons and daughters of school headmasters. Barring these
peace loving stone pelters, there isn’t much proof to substantiate PM’s this
particular claim. We even found new 2000 bills with couple of terrorists who
were wrongfully murdered by our security forces. And keep it in mind; the said
incident happened when most of us were wasting at least an hour in queue to get
hold of a single 2000 rupee note. Currencies’ reaching the terrorists before we
could lay our hands on them is worrisome and it certainly needs an extensive
investigation. We might as well find another noble school headmaster behind
this skilful currency management. Talking about cross-border infiltration,
well, it hasn’t gone down much. But then, why the ‘Fidayeen’ would require much
cash? Their job is to infiltrate and ambush the target before our ever
lethargic intelligence springs into action. It is the terror sleeper cells that
require money to survive and plot. It is the Huriyaat type outfits that would
require money to fund the stone pelters. If anything, the pelters are gone and
we can safely assume the hawks in Huriyaat are struggling for fund. As about
the sleeper sells, we need a detailed report, if at all we can get one, to conclude either way. But as of
today, PM’s this particular claim holds minimal water and isn’t convincing me much either.
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