GUWAHATI: Demonetisation sent ripples across the country within minutes of the announcement by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the evening of November 8 but it took three days for the ripples to reach this town on the border with China in Arunachal Pradesh.
Except for staff of the lone SBI branch here and perhaps a few officials in the administration and some defence personnel, nobody had a whiff of what the Prime Minister announced for two days and business went on as usual.
Perched at an altitude of 6,200 feet 29 km as the crow flies from the Tibetan border, Mechukha is a sub-division in West Siang district of Arunachal Pradesh. It has 160 villages with a population of 13,200. The nearest Indian town from Mechukha is the district headquarters of Aalo, which is 190 km downhill. The state capital Itanagar is 492 km away. There is an airstrip here, built years ago for the defence forces, which is used by the private helicopter service provider Skyone Airways to ferry passengers at times. The solitary road, built a decade ago, that connects Mechukha to Aalo is as good as non-existent.
There is no ATM in the town. So the only place people could have gone to upon learning of the demonetization of big notes was the SBI branch here. Nobody knew about the countrywide closure of banks on November 9 and 10 and so there was no rush of customers to exchange their Rs 500 and Rs 1000 currency notes. It was only on November 11 that news filtered in and people made a beeline to the SBI branch.
For most people the import of the news came from people they knew in Guwahati. But then only BSNL works here and the lines are down almost the whole day. On the day the Prime Minister made his announcement, Mechukha went to sleep innocent of the decision. The few people who knew of the demonetization had no trouble using their high-value currency notes the next morning.
The situation has changed totally since then, and the economy of the border town has turned topsy turvy. On the telephone from Mechukha, Kesang Goiba, the president of the Mechukha village chieftains committee, told this correspondent that most of the shops and commercial establishments have remained shut for the past three days. "We learnt of it (demonetization) on November 11. Since then, we have been visiting the SBI branch but they are telling us there is no change. We are going through a very difficult time," he said.
Goiba added, "There is no business at all. Most of the shops are closed. We are bartering rations and vegetables with neighbours. We don't know for how long we will have to go through this agony," he said.