Demonetisation is our latest national obsession. It has invited plenty of drama, display of crude emotions, motivated comments and forecasts of doomsday for Indian economy. We saw Shiv Sainiks march to meet the President along with the Congress, NCP, SP, JD(U), CPI(M), CPI and BSP leaders, and Didi travel to Patna—to forcibly embrace Rabri Yadav—and Lucknow, where she gave a clarion call to punish PM Narendra Modi for his perfidy.
Apparently unnerved at losing the stockpile of 500 and 1,000 currency notes, Didi had been hallucinating! She thinks her delayed landing was planned by Modi to kill her midair and that Army was deployed on the streets of Kolkata to forcibly unseat her from power lest she intensifies her opposition to demonetisation. She fails to understand that more than 20 per cent economic activities in rural Bengal are run on fake currencies and another 40 per cent on black money. This hurts the state’s development and creates criminal interest groups.
Arvind Kejriwal, Didi’s new-found bag piper, smells scam and economic emergency. No less rattled is UP’s Behenji and Netaji who remain perplexed over how to contest the forthcoming Assembly elections with empty pockets. Lalu Yadav is the smartest of all. His reaction has been uncharacteristically belated and routine.
The Parliament is being vandalised daily over this issue. The sight of Opposition leaders screaming and jumping into the well makes one worry about the Speaker’s safety. Their concern for the common man is nothing but a sham! Had they cared for the poor and spent honestly even 50 per cent of the loot, India’s story of development would have been a fairy tale.
Modi is under fire ostensibly for attacking Indians’ addiction to black money. It all started under Nehru. The Licence Raj that he presided and his tolerance of corrupt colleagues helped the growth of a ‘corruption’ culture. Indira Gandhi legitimised the same by calling it an international phenomenon and a reality. Since then successive governments, including the NDA under A B Vajpayee, have pilferaged public money.
As a young officer, I was appalled to see thousands of currency notes tumbling out of the coffers of a governor, his predecessor carting away silverware and carpets to his hometown, unloading of black money from a government aircraft to fund a state election and insatiable greed of a President for gold and farm products. Similar experiences became too frequent and disturbing in my later years.
Generating black money had become our habit. Its practitioners had become bold and ingenious over the years. You saw them buying railway and air tickets in heaps, depositing in Jan Dhan accounts to the brim, overselling petrol and diesel, hiking charges for medical treatments and tests, and using ambulances and coffins to ferry cash. Bankers became millionaire overnight and district magistrates and revenue officials exhibited rare concern for jewellers’ welfare. Indians’ jugaad workmanship has indeed been at its finest since November 8.
Modi’s decision to squeeze this habit dry, therefore, deserves praise even for its recklessness. Napoleon was once asked to choose the best soldiers and officers before going for a battle. He opted for average, mediocre commanders, saying that if the aim was to win the war, he would rather not have dissenters, philosophers and argumentative soldiers. Similarly, for Modi, unearthing black money is a war and he cannot risk taking Didi, Behenji, Rahul, Netaji and their likes as his generals.
Unwittingly, Modi has also done something unthinkable. For years, intelligence agencies, Army and governments liberally distributed unaccounted money among Kashmiri separatists. Modi nipped this very source of their sustenance. The impact has been decisive. As a result, the incidents of violence nosedived since July as the cash-strapped separatists failed to keep the Valley on the boil. Naxals met similar fate. One of their leaders confided in me that most of the demonetised currencies they had, are now trash.
If Modi wipes the system clean of black money even partially, it will be a great moral victory. As for political benefits, these are yet to crystalise. Currently, there is a groundswell of resentment over implementation of demonetisation which may adversely impact the BJP’s prospects in UP elections. However, during the next two-and-a-half years, we should expect him to empower the poor demonstratively, move decisively towards cashless transactions, crack at other forms of black money and open up opportunities for those who aspire and are eager to achieve.
amarbhushan@hotmail.com