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| Demonetization |
Today (30th December 2016) marks the 50th
day after our PM Shri Narendra Modiji announced a historic move of
demonetization of high value currency notes of `
500/- and `
1000/- on 8th of November 2016.
In his high-octane speech on 8th November, Modiji
urged citizens of India to bear the brunt of demonetization till 30th
December (for 50 days) by which he expected the things would return to
normalcy. As promised by him; indeed situation is improving as I like many
others could withdraw 5-6 thousand rupees in 2 days from ATM and our waiting
time was not more than 5 -6 minutes each day.
Much has happened in these 50 days right from the doors of
government to opposition and from public to media. So this attempt is to list
down “Things Gone Right” (TGR) and “Things Gone Wrong” (TWG) from a point of
view of lay man like me who is a Modi supporter.
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| New Notes of Rs. 500/- and Rs. 2000/- |
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No.
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TGW (Things Gone Wrong)
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TGR (Things Gone Right)
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1.
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Unpunished, ever-growing and socially acceptable corruption and black
money since past 70 years of Indian Independence
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Guts shown by our PM to take steps against such menace of a
corrupt system and black money
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2.
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a) Long queues, cash crunch, inconvenience to general public all
across India.
b) Few stray incidences of public unrest.
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a) Support given by citizens from all walks of life even at the cost
of huge inconvenience to them.
b) Support of citizens arrested by our PM through no. of public speeches with no major incidence of public unrest against overwhelming and inevitable
problems of demonetization.
c) Initial support given by almost all of the opposing parties
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3.
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a) Unpreparedness of GOI seen through stalled micro economic
activities due to crash crunch.
b) Frequent policy changes by GOI and RBI and
c) some time complete reversal of its policies.
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a) Nothing would have prepared anyone for the herculean task of
scrapping 80 – 86% of the currency in circulation in the vast country like
India.
b) It reflects agility of the system (big difference from Manmohan
era) in spite being a ‘Sarkari’ system and speed of decision making of GOI.
c) Policy reversal reflects willingness of GOI to accept its mistakes
and do the course correction.
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4.
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a) Nothing was done by the GOI (like printing more currency notes of
low denominations) in anticipation of the cash crunch in cash driven economy
of India.
b) Even in his speech on 8th; Modiji fell short of
portraying the severity of the entire overhaul and most of the commoners
especially from metros inaccurately considered money exchange and cash
withdrawal would return to absolute normalcy within couple of weeks.
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a) High level of secrecy and surprise was at most important to arrest
black to white conversions of politicos and corrupts.
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5.
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Life came to a standstill with no cash to spend on daily necessities
particularly in villages and more so for the remote villages where there is
zero or limited exposure to financial institutes and internet.
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Remarkably reduced naxalism, terrorism, human trafficking etc.
In fact economic activities began to normalise in Kashmir after demonetization
as separatists are left with no money to entice Kashmiri youths in to stone
pelting and other anti-national activities.
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6.
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Still lot of them were able to convert black money in to white through illegal means.
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These cases coming in to light shows how strong the system has become
and how determined the government is to win this battle against black money.
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7.
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Agitations of opposition parties against government with the aim to
get a traction to stop Modi wave
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Modi wave is far from dying. BJP is a clear cut winner in local gram
panchayat and municipality elections.
|
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8.
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Most of the media (presstitutes) being against Mr. Modi and BJP were
busy telecasting only the negative impacts of demonetization.
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Still there were couple of news channels which were firmly supportive
of the decision.
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9.
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Normalcy is still a distant dream as cash crunch is going to bother
us for couple of more months.
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a) Cash crunch is easing out for sure and as explained in the introduction,
I have experienced it myself.
b) Cash crunch is turning out to be a good push for the digital / cash less or limited cash economy - though this might not have been the initial aim.
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Finally, in the short term it might be easy to conclude that demonetization was a 'poorly executed - correct decision' (economic indicators like GDP, IIP might support this statement) or nothing on the balck money / corruption front will actually change in the long run; making this entire exercise of demonetization a futile one but I am more happy that my PM elect believes in action.
Action with an intention of correcting it if gone wrong is
better than the inaction of decades!
