It will be a long time before ‘We the People of India’ will be able to talk of Life Before Demonetisation dispassionately. What will be recalled with varying degrees of anger or satisfaction is the ‘surgical strike’ against black money that caused considerable collateral damage.
There is no dearth of prophets of doom who have pronounced that the decision will cost Narendra Modi and NDA dear; 2019 isn’t very far and the people who have been forced to wait painfully in the queues at the banks aren’t inclined to forget and forgive.
There are scary stories doing rounds on social media informing the ‘stay at home in stressful times’ types how every day dozens of senior citizens or differently-abled are collapsing and expiring, as the struggle for exchanging old currency notes for new becomes more vicious and where only the ruthless strong can survive. Housewives, if one is to believe the viral tweets, have jumped from rooftops and beggars have died of heart attacks unable to bear the shock of sudden loss of their life’s savings hoarded in `1,000 notes. Critics’ chorus is increasingly strident: “The ‘Fat Cats’ against whom the Nuke Missile was launched remain unscathed and continue to purr happily. How long can this madness be allowed to continue?”
What is strange is that the common man on whose behalf the usual suspects are shouting themselves hoarse has shown remarkable patience and resilience through trying times. It can’t be denied that there have been avoidable glitches in implementation but there have been hardly any angry outbursts on the part of the distressed poor against this scheme to excise the Cancer of Black Money. It is the leaders like Mayawati, Mamata Banerjee, Mulayam Singh Yadav, Sitaram Yechury, Arvind Kejriwal and forever waiting in the wings for a photo-op Rahul Gandhi who have suddenly found a common cause.
It may well be that the trashing of old high-value currency notes was at least partially motivated by the desire to deal a crippling blow to political opponents in election-bound states but this doesn’t mean that it isn’t going to strike a significant blow at other corrupt and anti-social elements.
One or two small points before we move on. Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, arguably the most staunch ideological opponent of PM Modi, has had no problems endorsing this decision. Nor has it caused consternation in Naveen Patnaik’s Odisha.
Ditto in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Tamil Nadu. It is against this backdrop that Mamata’s and Kejriwal’s hysterical outbursts should be discussed. Ironically, it’s the NDA allies like the SAD and Shiv Sena who are outraged by this ‘betrayal’.
There are countless cynics who tell us that all this is sham—just a clever stratagem to distract popular attention from abject failure on all fronts by an incompetent government, increasingly intolerant and unresponsive to the aspirations of the people. They sneer and remark that very soon everything will return to normal. The corrupt will find ingenious jugaad to convert their black money and to multiply it in myriad ways. Isn’t the introduction of a `2,000 note a friendly gesture to halve their bother? Let us not be distracted.
The decision to dramatically trash high-value old currency notes is directed not only against unfriendly netas. It primarily targets terrorists funded by forged notes and organised crime syndicates. Those who are busy blaming the PM for sparing his industrialist friends forget deliberately that at dizzying capitalist heights even cronies don’t handle cash. Markets soar madly or crash without any thick wads of crisp paper changing hands. It is the hoarders and black marketeers, the real estate sharks who depend on cash transactions. Add to this the fairly large segment of tax-evading professionals, super specialist surgeons, legal eagles, celebrity entertainers and actors, sportspersons and media persons who ‘prefer’ to receive remuneration for services rendered in cash and kind, and you can understand what the hue and cry is all about.
It’s been a part of conventional political wisdom in our land that it’s the parallel economy that generates black money. What remains unexplained is that why this parallel economy has not weakened after the much-touted dismantling of licence permit raj. Nor do we pause to ponder that this parallel economy is inextricably twined with the real economy. All of us or almost all are touched and transformed by black money. This is the reason the proverbial man on the street is bound to be hurt when remedial measures are undertaken. Even the daily-wage earner, an immigrant labourer working on a construction site will suffer as the real estate boom turns into bust. Or, as the fat weddings that provided employment for tentwallahs, cooks, waiters and vegetable and food vendors suddenly turn into a mirage, pangs of hunger will have a ripple effect.
But it’s not the poor who are groaning, it’s the always bold and in their eyes forever beautiful who are crying foul!
pushpeshpant@gmail.com
Pushpesh Pant
Former professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University