By Ranjona Banerji
These are just headlines from the Dehradun edition of the Times of India, Sunday November 20:
:: Why demonetisation will hit just a fraction of black money: Estimates cap illegal cash at 5% of total black economy
:: 3 die after failing to exchange notes
:: Panic attacks send bizmen, surgeons, ministers to shrinks
:: 4.5mn trucks stranded on Indian roads
:: Senior citizens queue outside banks to exchange Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes (From blurb: Many of the old citizens however complained that some of the banks were still cashless and the withdrawal limit had added to their problems)
:: Cops in fix over confiscated cash in demonetised notes, seek legal help (from blurb: The cash worth crores is case property… can only be opened with permission of the court)
:: Industries opt for lock down, cut production to tide over slump: Many of the 700 factories in Udham Singh Nagar can’t pay for transport, labourers
:: Agra’s shoe industry stares at uncertain future (from inside body copy: serious manpower crisis as the factory owners are not able to arrange cash)
**
This is just one day and three pages (I am, umm, ignoring the Mobikwik ads on the front and inside jackets!).
**
We are now almost a fortnight into life after demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes and the nation is still in chaos. However, the media remains up and down on the issue, especially English news television. While they have reported extensively on the trauma, their coverage has still been limited to ATM queues in cities.
The situation in villages has become worse. With legal tender in short supply, it is clearly being sent first to cities and then to remote areas. The sowing season is on, which means that both farmers and farm labourers are affected. I am ashamed to admit that those of us who live in cities are completely clueless about life elsewhere and we continue to ask stupid questions about why the underprivileged are not cashless. I feel sometimes comments like that should be highlighted and some facts presented to their makers. Cashless in rural India usually means distress and debt.
Even from a heartless solely journalistic principle, there are enough stories to be done about the flourishing black market industry which has emerged out of this move to flush out unaccounted cash. TS Sudhir exposes how corruption works in the police in Andhra Pradesh and Telengana for firstpost.com – and it is a befitting answer to some of the hysterical drum-beating faux nationalism seen in that news website’s comment pieces.
http://www.firstpost.com/india/demonetisation-drive-the-corruption-economy-will-be-unaffected-by-this-move-3116312.html
There are money exchange agents all over the country now, taking cuts of anywhere from 10% to 30% per cent to exchange old notes. Why doesn’t some star anchor have a television “debate†on the great Indian sense of “jugaad†coming to the rescue? Our retired and/or sacked corporate honchos who lecture us endlessly on how great this Central government is should all be there. Incidentally, am I the only one who thought that Barkha Dutt ought to have asked Gurcharan Das on last Saturday’s show what happened to those 10 million jobs the Modi government was going to create? After all, some of those jobs have now been created – in illegal currency-trading!
In fact, the scope for television is fabulous here. Remember when Montek Singh Ahluwalia and the Planning Commission (in UPA times) came up with appalling and absurd poverty line per diem figures for a sustainable life in the city? And two young men tried to live on that and ran out of money in a couple of hours?
Why not take Mohandas Pai, Gurcharan Das, Sunil Alagh – I have picked out these names at random – and do a TV reality show like Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie’s The Simple Life? Send them to a remote Indian village. And let them survive for one month on plastic and cashless money alone.
Anyone?
**
Post script: And what is happening on India Today TV? There was Rajdeep Sardesai sitting and chatting with Sonia Gandhi about her mother-in-law on Monday evening.
Must have been some real antacid moments for Patriot Star Anchors in the newsroom there!