One Nation, One Tax, One Currency, One Modi and No Money
THERE was a time when many people in the country did not know who the Prime Minister was. It is said Morarji Desai visited a village and asked one of the villagers if he knew who was ruling the country. "yes", replied the villager. Morarji Bhai was happy that he was known even in the remote villages. On being asked as to who the ruler was, the villager replied, "Lord Ram"!
Last week, I was in Mawsynram, a tiny village in remote Meghalaya, which reportedly receives the highest rainfall in the country. And everyone I met in this village knew Narendra Modi as the Prime Minister who performed the vanishing trick on the 500 and 1000 rupee notes right across the country.
I spoke to several people - a taxi driver in Kolkata, tea sellers outside the Kali temple in Kolkata, a mahout & an elephant owner in Kaziranga National Park, priests & pretty girls in Guwahati. People were facing a lot of difficulties and business has come down to less than half, but life seems to be going on normally with the irrepressible Indian as cheerful as ever. I went to an EXPO in Guwahati and found a large number of people queuing up to buy entry tickets. I went to an expensive hotel in Guwahati and found the place full with people drinking merrily to the sound of live music. I ate in a cheap wayside motel and was told that business was difficult but life was okay.
But I found the 'legal tender' had no takers and the demonetised currency was in full circulation. Nobody was prepared to accept the new 2000 rupee note, not even a Star Hotel, but everyone was more than willing to take the old 500 and 1000 rupee notes. I had to pay a thousand rupees for a boat to ferry me to the Umananda temple on an island in the Brahmaputra. My taxi driver who bargained the deal with the boatman asked me what currency notes. I was going to pay the boatman. I was told that he would not take the 2000 rupee note; then I agreed to pay 100 rupee notes. The driver took my ten 100 rupee notes and gave a thousand rupee note to the boatman.
ALL SMILES FOR FUTURE
This beautiful girl Ambu gave me roti in a ramshackle hut in Mawsynram. What do we have in store for Ambu and her son?
Ambu means beauty
The ingenuity of the Indian knows no bounds. A small time trader outside the temple told me that some rich people threw away currency notes into the Brahmaputra. How nice it would have been if they had given it away to poor people like her. She said 30,000 rupees would solve all her problems and one of her fantasies is that like the newspaper thrown at the door, one day God will ensure that a bundle of 30,000 rupees lands up on her doorstep and till then she is happy to bear with Modi's money mantra. "after all he means good for the country", she adds smilingly.
A tea vendor told me, "we had no money on 9th November and we have no money now, I sleep happily."
"Old or new or no notes, I will not let my elephant go hungry", said a mahout to me in the Kaziranga National Park
Yesterday, the RBI announced that from November 10, 2016 upto November 18, 2016:
1. Banks have exchanged Rs. 33,006 crores.
2. Bank deposits amounted to Rs. 5,11,565 crore
3. Cash withdrawals amounted to Rs. 1,03,316 crore
Against an inflow of 5.44 lakh crores, there was an outflow of only 1.03 crore. RBI had earlier reported that as on 28th October 2016, the currency with the public was to the tune of 17 lakh crores. Of this, it is reported that about 86%, that is 14.2 lakh crores were 500 and 1000 rupee notes. So, now there is only about 4 lakh crores in circulation against the 17 lakh crore earlier. People have to manage with less than one-fourth the amount of currency they had earlier. A difficult situation?