By now, either our cash woes would have abated a little or we would have got used to them. There is no doubt that ordinary, honest citizens, small businesses, agriculturists, etc have been hit hard by the Midnight Modi Missile launched without warning. Rs 500 notes, if not Rs 1000 ones, are the most common and convenient legal tender across the economic divide. So parting with them in a huff without adequate back up or access to lesser denominations is most distressing. The pinch and pain are quite plain.
Should a, er, ‘the’ good part of the nation, which leads an ATM to mouth life, suffer for the crimes of the bad ones? That’s a Rs 100 note question that defies answer. We can only fall back on the PM for some clarity. His candid speech – I listened to the angrezi version delivered in chaste Hinglish — was assuring and did assuage our apps, meaning, apprehensions a bit. He did not mince words in saying that the honest people would be put to ‘temporary’ (read terrible) hardship and even took their consent for ‘sacrifice’ for granted.
A crumb of comfort comes from the confidence that Modi himself may not have a collection of those cursed currency, though the same cannot be said of some of his own colleagues, compatriots and of course, his cherished enemies in the opposition. So, if Modi can’t do this, nobody can. But all his honourable intent risks being undermined by gross official miscalculation & shoddy handling of the cash crunch.
Our physical misery is also aggravated by other legitimate angsts. Simpletons sans tons of notes, but just a purseful, went scurrying out, stalking streets and knocking on shops like thieves, to make nocturnal deals with unsuspecting parties of the other part, in a bid to be rid of the suddenly soiled stuff. In hindsight, we must admit we were shaken and shamed by these acts of panic; a pang of anger did rise up against the Government for making good people feel guilty about their own money. If not skeletons, many bones tumbled out of family cupboards and tins too. That night and the dawn after, ours felt like a country of criminals.
And to be unwittingly equated to real robbers was even more mortifying. Now, there are those who held hard-earned tax paid money in 500s and 1000s. There are also the ones who had hard-earned albeit stacks of black, which was illegal but not immoral, and can be legitimised by owning up and paying up. But the worst are the privileged politicos whose stashes of cash were not just illegal but ill-gotten and immoral. Alas, Modi’s carpet bombing, or rather, carpet bagging, swept everyone summarily off their feet, without distinction! And in that lies a major credibility hole.
Most of us are open sellers of goods or services produced or delivered by us. In any case, we are not the ones who sold public assets like spectrum or coal blocks on the sly! We cannot be bundled and made bedfellows of the sordid, spoiled, scandalous scammers who actually stole both our notes and votes. Okay, this latest attack on corruption is a ‘minor’ blow to the common man: but this should have been preceded by big blows to political moneybags across parties and regions, all of whom had their wrongful riches flashing like neon signs all along. Much of that loot may have scooted the land and much may be invested in, well, land, but still, sacks and suitcases are aplenty. No war on corruption can carry credence without targetting the fountainhead, namely, politicos.
For instance, forget Swiss banks, 100 day targets, Letters Rogatories, etc that none understands. Just a visit without visa by IT sleuths to the very Indian TN would have yielded in fifteen days flat enough black gold to fill the fiscal deficit and even leave a hefty surplus for lending to impoverished America whose financial woes Trump trumpeted to emerge triumphant. Here in this State corruption is so rational that even Councillors carry cash in car boots, Ministers and MLAs have hi-tech counting machines that the RBI can actually borrow and estates, hills etc are made of high denomination bills, not hard rock or sand. Just this past election in TN, the cash haul by EC was an all-time, all-India record with just one seizure yielding around Rs 575 crs (and still unexplained). TN’s own J & K problem, if you get the drift, demands a special, strong surgical strike. Instead, the IT dept chooses to raid Nayantara!
Oh, this impotent middle-class rage has made me rile for a while. Of course, I am happy because a decisive, now-or-never battle with the black buck was long overdue. Happy that baneful barons might become barren overnight; happy that many politicos are staring down a bottomless black hole; happy that counterfeiters, for now, have been felled in an economic encounter; happy that hawala operators could go diwaal; happy that terrorists funding may be found wanting for quite some time to come; happy that a clear time-wall has been erected in the present to distinguish past and future money: and finally happy that, with our fateful, fatal parallel economy under check, our real economy can aspire to become one without a parallel.
The enforced ‘sacrifice’ is turning out to be an enduring torture. We only wish all our troubles are worth it. By the way, why not offer some handsome reliefs in personal IT that can come as a soothing balm?
e-mail the writer at [email protected]