KOCHI: A disclaimer in his blog reads ‘I am not an economist. I am a civil engineer by profession’. The 47-year-old engineer, who works with the Kerala government’s special cell on the Mullaperiyar Dam water dispute had written and commented extensively on the threat posed by the Mullaperiyar dam to lakhs of people living in the Central Kerala, but of late he is becoming a credible voice on a matter even economists are finding it difficult to decipher.
James Wilson, a virtuoso on water resources management and interstate water disputes, hailing from Kollam in Kerala has emerged as an expert voice on the aftermath of the government’s demonetisation drive. While people were groping in the dark to interpret the government’s move in the days following November 8, his blog ‘Decipher the Demonetisation’, and his Twitter handle @jamewils have been feeding information to the public, largely revealing the drawbacks of the demonetisation drive. His posts had even forced the Reserve Bank of India to delete a statement issued by its deputy governor, R Gandhi, on the volume of new notes.
“After the government decided to withdraw the higher value notes, I got two Rs 2000 notes in exchange of Rs 500 and Rs 1000. Later, I find it very difficult to get change for the new purple-pink currency notes. I went on to study the impact of the government decision and find serious drawbacks,” he says.
His first tweet on demonetisation appeared on the night Prime Minister announced his decision to withdraw Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes. Five weeks later
he launched his new blog on December 17. The post titled ‘₹500 NOTE – Pivot note of the currency in circulation’ discussed about the number of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 in circulation and the time needed to replace the demonetised notes with new notes, supporting his argument with tables, graphs and pie charts.
He also rubbished the government version that it was planning demonetisation at least for 6 months in advance, by raising a question “why did RBI push lakhs of crores of demonetised currency into the system in the preceding months before demonetisation? Just to demonetise it later?”
On December 21, he published another hard-hitting piece – ‘A monumental disaster in the offing’ – that analysed the capacity of printing presses and the possibility of outsourcing the work to foreign countries. So far his blog has been viewed by more than 71,000 people.
James says that he collects data from the websites of the Reserve Bank of India and the National Payment Corporation of India, along with referring to the journals before tweeting and writing his ideas in the blog.
He says that the government decision to demonetise the higher value currency notes and restricting the exchange of notes to five RBI centres after December 31, 2016 has only given people troubles. “There may be several people living in the interiors of the country who are yet to know about the demonetisation.
Government’s decision has only given pain and distress to the citizens,” he added.
While most of the people are supporting his views, a few seems to be skeptic. "Your analysis is based on the assumption that the whole 24023 million pieces were in circulation before the demonetisation. Can it be true? A lot of people were hoarding money and definitely there were a few millions in the currency chests and in the banks. We have to take into consideration of this too when attempt an analysis like this," reads one of the comments on his blog.