INDIA DREAM CALLS FOR REMO 2020 UNDER PM MODI

The time has come for the PM to go ahead with a 2020 Remo (remonetization) of the Indian economy, involving not only currency placed in the hand but deposits into individual bank accounts as well.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, through the Health Ministry and the Ministry of External Affairs, has been personally responsible for the unprecedented steps taken by the Government of India to prevent or substantially suppress Stage III (the phase involving community infection) of the

Covid-19 epidemic. The 1.29 billion people of India are now looking to the PM for similar bold and efficacious moves through the Finance, Agriculture and Industry Ministries to safeguard the economic health of the country. The efficacy of the measures ordered by the Prime Minister bring out the essentiality of the governance mechanism both in the Centre and in the States delivering the results expected of them rather than underperform. This level of effort will need close monitoring, enforcement of accountability and fine-tuning of the administration by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) such as will implement Modi’s desire for change. That the present Prime Minister of India is ahead of his time was clear from his early recognition of the fact that the world—and India in particular—needed to transition from paper to digital currency at the earliest. While the former can spread diseases within the population, the latter will not. While the former can be hidden away from prying eyes (a particular source of danger to society in cases where such cash has its origins in terror-related activities), the latter cannot be. The more digitalised a system becomes, the greater will be its level of transparency. It was presumably this knowledge that led Modi to ask his team to go forward with the 2016 Demo (demonetization) of 86% of the country’s currency. Had this bold plan of the Prime Minister been implemented in the spirit in which it was conceived by him, at a minimum the new currency notes would have had safety features that made counterfeiting much more difficult than has long been the case with the rupee, which has long been among the most easily counterfeited currencies within the G-20. Thanks to Demo, almost all the domestic currency that had been kept away from the banking system would have had to return to it in order to get exchanged for new notes. Such a process brought unaccounted cash into the open, even if several such deposits soon got converted back into currency. While dealing with the administrative structure, PM Modi settled on caution as the watchword. And Demo is not the only path-breaking reform carried out under the watch of PM Modi. There were many who scoffed at the millions of Zero Balance bank accounts that he ordered to be created, but now these very accounts can ensure that money to tide over the novel coronavirus

A migrant worker carries his son as they walk along a road to return to their village, during a 21-day nationwide lockdown to limit the spreading of Covid-19, in New Delhi, on Thursday.