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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Demonetisation: A circus, clowns and a silver bullet -James Wilson

Demonetisation: A circus, clowns and a silver bullet -James Wilson

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published Published on Nov 6, 2018   modified Modified on Nov 6, 2018
-National Herald

Two years after the disastrous demonetisation, the Prime Minister and his Finance Minister—even the fawning media— no longer speak of the ‘Demonetisation Dividend’. There has been none

Two years back, on November 8, at around 8.30 pm, the Prime Minister of India, with his characteristic love for drama, unleashed on the country what he had then claimed was the one silver bullet which would eliminate the triple evils of black money, fake currency, and terrorism.

According to its inventor—for, it was nothing less than an invention—it was a broad-spectrum panacea to end everything that was holding back India from taking off. So sure was this magician of its powers and potency that he asked for a mere 50 days of inconvenience to be borne by the long-suffering public of India. He must have believed in his own rhetoric, because he offered to make himself available at any crossroad of his detractors’ choice and receive the punishment of their choice, in case the measure failed.

A fawning public and a media, which was only happy to suspend even healthy disbelief, fell for the histrionics of one of the greatest actors India has produced. The breaking voice, the tears, the raw emotion, India had seen nothing like it before, even when the country had won its independence. Except for a small bunch of sceptics, practically all those who heard the declaration and the subsequent avowals at Goa and other meetings, were convinced that a clean India was just around the corner.

Then reality stuck, hard. Chaos reigned. People started dying in bank queues and in hospitals unable to pay for treatment; manyears were lost by those who could ill-afford it, standing in the interminable queues in front of ATMs which didn’t have any money or were unable to dispense currency notes for which they were not calibrated; rules and regulations were changed almost by the hour; decisions were taken and rolled back on the fly; rumours flew thick and fast about currency notes that had chips embedded in them which will lead the IT and ED sleuths right into dungeons of ill-gotten hoards of cash and of river Ganges being submerged with discarded currency notes. In short, it was a circus of sorts where the public didn’t realise they were the clowns.

The audacity with which narratives were changed, the unabashed ways in which goal posts were shifted, and the insensitivity with which people were taken for granted beggared belief. The media, instead of calling the bluff, played up the risible parts such as notes embedded with chips.

If demonetisation did nothing else, it did throw the Indian rural and informal economy truly and irretrievably under the bus. As against the 50 days begged for by the Hon’ble PM of the country, it took more than nine months to pump in currency to get the economy back on its wobbly legs again. Necrosis happens in heart muscles when it is starved of blood for a certain amount of time – its muscles die and it can never work with the same efficiency to pump the blood. What happened with the Indian economy was necrosis as a result of 86% of its currency in circulation being withdraw in one fell swoop, with no forethought, no planning, and apparently on a whim.

In these nine months, India’s GDP tanked, and hundreds of thousands of small businesses went bust, and many more millions of people lost their jobs and means of livelihood. Agricultural produce rotted in mandis as there were no buyers. Entranced by the story told to them by a snake oil salesman who dangled the carrot of a clean, corruption-free India, the public grinned and bore the tribulations of living in a cash-depleted economy as they had visions of the evil rich getting their comeuppance and being found out and put behind the bars.

Schadenfreude more than made up for their own angst and anguish. The dreams before them were further embellished with stories of each Jan Dhan account holder getting money apportioned from the surplus RBI would have from the unreturned money destroyed by the scared black-money holders. The purpose of the present exercise is to crunch numbers—available in the public domain—to get a true picture of the outlandish promises made and the stark reality which is now front of us.

Please click here to read more.

National Herald, 4 November, 2018, https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/opinion/demonetisation-a-circus-clowns-and-a-silver-bullet?fbclid=IwAR1ZCXUzz9NZx4FcLPaA8KUZhbsIdZeir_BPFJjS1tQMAMdyPKzvc1_37dg


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