CASH-INO ROYALE
DON’T GET DISTRACTED. READ THIS PIECE AND SOLVE THE GREAT INDIAN MYSTERY OF THE VANISHING (OR SAFELY STASHED) 500- AND 1,000-RUPEE NOTES
According to a study conducted by my millennial neighbour on the hierarchy of obsession, social media trumped money as the most talked about and transacted medium of the first half of 2016. It was set to end the year as numero uno, but then Enem (NM, Narendra Modi) upended the show by phasing out, and phasing in, money. Ergo, it was the return of the rupee. Ask any Indian about what his/ her most memorable moments of 2016 are, and chances are that Modiji’s money masterstroke/mistake (your choice) will feature on that hotlist.
They may be calling it India’s daymare or nightmare, but it was technically on the evening of 8/11 that Enem dropped the note bomb on the nation (and a neighbouring one too — I’m obviously referring to Nepal, where the Indian currency is welcomed as its own).
Prior to that date, the only note that I (oh-so-gullibly) believed could go off was the hot-tempered Note 7. But while Samsung gave its 2.5m fanboys (okay, Note 7 customers) time until eternity to get a full refund, the Indian PM gave 1.3 billion people a mere few hours before categorising 86 per cent of cash in circulation in the country as junk.
The value of all Rs500 and Rs1,000 (the demonetised denominations or, to wit, demons) fell down to zero. Nought. Nil. Nada. Nothing. Zilch. Zip… okay, I need to stop.
In one fell swoop, Modiji made illegal the legal tenders of Rs500 and Rs1,000. As a Supreme Court bench was to remark later, “Discontinuing of higher denomination notes appears to be carpet bombing and not surgical strike.” The latter, of course, referred to… oh, I digress again.
Back to demons and their math — and aftermath: Almost overnight, the entire nation went into a tizzy to exchange their demons into, well, mammons.
Longer queues are for the larger good, it was explained to those gratuitously lining up to exchange their hard-earned demons in rationed quantities. But it wasn’t all bad, really. Queues to exchange demons turned into impromptu ‘selfie’ celebrations while WhatsApp forwards (mostly about Rahul Gandhi) kept the humour quotient high.
Yes indeed, there were reports of people dying in emergency wards and mothers killing themselves because of lack of new demons but hey, black money and corruption — the evils that the new demons will hunt down and kill — have killed many more.
But even as the common man is busy getting new tattoos (indelible ink, of course) for yet another princely quota of Rs4,000 (Dh218) per week of new demons, a paltry sum of Rs160 crore in new demons had been seized at the time of writing this piece.
A well-researched estimate suggested that the seized new demons, when stacked on top of one another, were enough to build a 25-floor building. When stacked end-to-end, went on the very detailed dissection, it would be enough to pave a road halfway from Delhi to Agra.
At one of the several water-cooler discussions I’ve had on the topic, someone remarked, ‘But isn’t it good that so much black money — never mind if it’s in old or new demons — is being seized?’ Umm… I’m not even going to dignify that with a response. But there does remain an existential question unanswered (back me up here, Mr Rajan) — the Indian currency, unlike the US dollar, is a promissory note.
Imprinted on each demon issued by the RBI, for instance, are these words: “I promise to pay the bearer the sum of one thousand Rupees”. And the promissory note is signed by the RBI governor.
According to the RBI website, the “I promise to pay … statement means that the banknote is a legal tender for the specified amount. The obligation on the part of the Bank is to exchange a banknote with bank notes of lower value or other coins which are legal tender under the Indian Coinage Act, 2011, of an equivalent amount.”
Okay, someone please tell me what happened to that promise. Mr Modi? Mr Urjit Patel? Anyone?
Enlighten me. Is that promise to the bearer dated and/or conditional? As in “I promise to pay the bearer the sum of one thousand Rupees but not after December 30, 2016”? Or, “I promise to pay the bearer the sum of one thousand Rupees but not if the bearer has already withdrawn Rs2,500 today”? But enough about monetary technicalities. Let me get back to day-to-day simplicities.
As an expat family of four, we still hold Rs15,000 in demons (still, a princely sum), and I don’t know what to do with them.
I don’t have the luxury to visit India and stand in a queue to exchange the demons before yesterday. And none of my three relatives here in Dubai travelled before that date either.
Besides, most of that money belongs to my kids, who got the notes over the years as festive gifts from our Area Neighbours Giving Extra Love (our angels). To be honest, I haven’t made much of an effort to get rid of my demons — not because I don’t need the money, but because I’m afraid that if I got rid of my demons, I’d lose my angels.
In the second study done by my millennial neighbour, aptly titled How to Manage Notes and Influence People, he lists three things to cash in on the cash crisis.
1. Aim for antiquity: If you have lots of 500-ers, preserve them for future generations. They may bag 500 times their value decades from now.
2. Create a wall mnemonic: All it takes is an idea to keep you in daily touch with India’s monetary past — plaster your walls with notes edge to edge.
3. Turn them into mementos: The best gifts are those that are not easily available. In a few years from now, the 500s will be only found on your FB archives. Imagine a real 500 gift with a loving message: I kept it for you.
My neighbour has a sense of humour. He invokes the famous AAA (Amar Akbar Anthony) audio meme to describe the notes charade: “You know the whole country of the system is juxtapositioned by the hemoglobin in the atmosphere because you are a sophisticated rhetorician intoxicated by the exuberance of your own verbosity.”