‘On cusp of history’

growing economy in the world...few years from now we hope to evolve from a developing economic economy into a developed economy. We, of course, have our own developmental challenges,” Jaitley said at a Petrotech event.

“But over the last 70 years, an extremely comfortable relationship between policy planners, businesses, trade and even a large section of us citizens, myself included, has developed...what was the normal Indian life, that if I had to buy property, the two components of payments would be discussed. In a wholesalerretailer relationship, the two components of payments will be discussed. And this has almost become the normal and for a government to try and disturb this normal, obviously, is disruptionist. For governments, for Prime Ministers to just look the other way was also the normal,”

He said such a normal had to disrupted for India to grow. “And, therefore, this situation which has continued for almost seven decades, could have continued indefinitely. But this so called seven-decade normal had to be disrupted, and it had to be disrupted because a normal for any society can’t be this normal which existed. And, therefore, the Prime Minister had the broad shoulders to face the consequences of this decision. And a decision of this kind carries a pain in transition, which is regrettable, but which was also factored in. But in the process, you find that today the phase we are passing through, we are at a major cusp of change in history,” he said.

There is shortage of the new currency but this had to be substituted through digital means, he said. “In these 2/3 months, India will move digital. We will achieve far more than what we have achieved in the past few decades. What we will end up achieving is to lay down this new normal,” he said.

k at the long-term impact of these steps which are going to be taken, I think India is going is become a society in the long term with a certainly better GDP, a cleaner ethics, a cleaner economy,” Jaitley said.