Demonetisation will prevent corruption

Economists agree that a cashless society will leave fewer avenues FOR CORRUPTION BY MAKING IT DIFfiCULT TO BE CORRUPT.

Appreciating the big bang move unleashed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to shovel-out black money and transform an overwhelmingly cash economy to a cashless one, Mohan Das Pai, chairman, Manipal Global Institute, says: “It certainly requires guts of steel to dare a transformative move like this.” Only a few would disagree with PM Modi’s observation that the magnitude of cash in circulation is directly linked to the level of corruption in society. “Cash has lost its credibility,” says Bipin Preet Singh, CEO & co-founder of MobiKwik, a mobile wallet company. “The strong step taken by the Modi government will benefit the growth of digital payments and digital banking in India. We have seen a tremendous growth (over 2000%) in merchant requests and user transactions since the announcement of ban of the currency notes,” adds Singh.

The surprise decision to demonetise higher denominated currency notes may not root out corruption completely, but economists agree that a cashless society indeed leaves fewer avenues for corruption by making it difficult or even painful to be corrupt. The said move would also bring sanity in

The government’s commitment to root out the menace of black money would trigger many positive externalities which the economy would BENEfiT FROM.

India’s real estate market “where nearly 40% of the illgotten wealth gets parked”, says Pai quoting an earlier finance ministry report. The government’s commitment to root out the menace of black money would trigger many positive externalities which the economy would benefit from. “In the medium term, much of the parallel economy is expected to come within the fold of the formal one leading to more tax collections,” says Nirupama Soundararajan, Senior Fellow with Pahle India Foundation, a not-for-profit policy think tank.

Industry watchers fore- see property prices coming down by up to 30%, especially in premium housing markets that are currently struggling with high volumes of unsold inventories. Delhi- NCR is one such luxury market which is perceived to be over-valued due to the black money component built cleverly into its price. Many developers in such markets are expected to default on the money given to them in cash. But the expected transparency in the system is going to attract large quantum of institutional capital (by FIIs & private equity players) into the sector.

However, the transitioning period is not going to be less painful. Control on money withdrawal would contract the overall demand in the economy. Traders complain that as a consequence of discontinuation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, the commercial markets wore a gloomy and deserted look. “We have prayed to the government to allow retail traders to accept high denomination currency, with a cap that maximum one high denomination note per consumer is accepted against a genuine bill,” feels the Confederation of All India Traders.