India’s currency crunch

RUPEE REFORM OR BREACH OF TRUST? Innocent millions living on and sustaining an essentially cash economy are hit hard

CURRENCY notes anywhere is a promise that must be kept, whatever the circumstances. This trust has been broken in India. The breach is temporary, but none knows how long. Demonetisation of Rupees 500 and 1,000 currency notes, a good and wellintentioned measure that Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced on Novr 8, but badly planned and executed, has pushed the common man in the worst crisis in many years — and for no fault.

It’s means-and-end battle. The means adopted have confounded not so much those targeted — black money hoarders, militants, property sharks and fake currency racketeers — but for now at least, innocent millions living on and sustaining an essentially cash economy.

A country of India’s size and population is heavily preoccupied with securing legitimate money lying in bank vaults but beyond reach.

The ubiquitous machine that spells “any time money” has become the dark symbol of this crisis.

When the government demonetised all Rs500 and Rs1,000 notes, it sucked out some 86 per cent of all money in circulation in the country. Two weeks on, only 10 per cent of the value of money demonetised has been pumped back as new notes. The cash crunch persists.

Women buying provisions for households, farmers needing seeds and fertilisers for this harvesting season, those travelling, rushing the sick to hospital or organising wedding — all find the banks in disarray and the ATMs’ shutters down.

Being without money when you have it in the bank, and getting it in small sums after hours of lining up at the ATMs can be miserable. It is compounded by a sense of humiliation at having indelible ink marked on the forefinger while depositing one’s own money.

Triumphant ministers have called the measure a “surgical strike”, referring to a military operation in Kashmir two months back. “It is surgical strike against innocent public,” countered Arun Shourie, economist-journalist and a former minister.

Those ostensibly pauperised include militants from Kashmir to the northeastern region and Maoists in the tribal areas. But that is no consolation to those who have nothing to do with militancy.

A bank manager, also a cancer patient, weeps before TV cameras complaining of not having gone home for three days and of being manhandled