Demonetisation is a Total Fiasco
By Prof. Madhav Sarkunde
Demonetisation phase is over now but the deficit of currency notes is as it is across country. Prime minister Shri Narendra Modi and finance minister Mr Arun Jetley had assured people of India that after fifty days there shall be no problem in this regard. All will be well. Everyone will get his money from their account in the banks. However, the truth is otherwise.
After 56 days on, the cash crunch is not resolved yet at all. People continue to queue up in front of the banks and ATM booths for hours together for a piece two thousand rupee note. One day while in a queue of ATM , I caught up a snatch of conversation between two laymen ahead of me. One said, “I don't understand if our prime minister Narendra Modi has achieved anything by this move.” Other other said,” Yes yaar, I too hold the same. Modi saheb had boastfully anounced that his demonetisation drive would curb corruption in high places which would, in turn, help the poor people and boost national economy. But nothing like this happened. Instead all that is in sight now is rampant corruption with new notes of two thousand denomination in many metro cities like Mumbai, Pune, Dehli, Kolkatta and Chennai. Crores of new currency notes are intercepted and covered from the middlemen who misadventured to exchange old currency notes of Rs 1000 and 500 for new currency notes of Rs 2000 and 500 on commission basis. They say that higher officers of banks, including RBI, are allegeday complicit in the scam.”
Indeed the demonetisation move has turned to be a complete fiasco pushing common man into unnecessary money crisis. Modi had gloried in his exercise of demonetisation saying that that would unmask those who stashed away black money. This also turned out a pipedream. Ironically, the demonetisation programme has totally failed even so Modi Sahib asserts that it is going well and India is passing through an unprecedented economic transformation. He leaves no stone unturned to hit out at all the leaders of other parties with the Congress his main target. It looks that our prime minister lacks knowledge of how million of the poor live in the remote villages and evidently far robbed of all fruits of modernism. One cannot ride a cycle properly and Modi Saheb asks him to fly a plane. This is absolutely impractical. He insists that all transactions must be cashless. It is never possible in a country like ours where almost all 70 % retail businesses are carried out in cash only, then on such background if someone gets assertive for cashless society it is beyond Ken. We gather from the things that India is inching towards despotic rule.
As the year 2016 gone by, one can look back and assess how the year has been for India in terms of its engagements with the other states in the international system. The year 2016 started with a great bonhomie between India and Pakistan as the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had just made a surprise to Pakistan to wish his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif on his birthday on 25th December, 2015 and he telephonically extended birthday greetings to Nawaz Sharif on December 25, 2016 too.
