Indians are bracing themselves for a new year without old
five hundred notes and thousand Rupee notes. There are new two thousand Rupee
notes in circulation now which are being slowly released into the market via
poorly cashed banks.
The drastic move was enforced upon the Indians by Prime
Minister Modi and his finance advisory team with the backing from newly
appointed RBI governor Mr Urjit Patel. The move was supposed to wipe out stored
black money and fake notes.
Many Indians stood behind Mr Modi and hailed his
revolutionary step as a master stroke against black money holders and promoters
of fake currency used by anti-nationals.
However the banks were struggling to release new currency
notes in return for old currency and people are struggling to do business with
cash particularly small vendors and daily wage workers have been badly affected
by this move.
Mr Modi and his current finance minister Mr Jaitley are
using this occasion to promote cashless society paving way for digital
transactions using cards only in future. One can only wait with apprehension to
see how a mighty nation like India can embrace such digital currency revolution
with some parts of India having no ATM facilities and millions of people still having
no bank card of any sort.
So far nearly twelve and a half lakhs crore Rupees have been
returned to banks as old notes and another two and half lakhs crore Rupees is
supposed to be returned to banks in the remaining few days before old notes are
completely banned.
Opposition leaders like Chidambaram, ex-finance Minister of
India have criticised this move as mindless and MIM leader, Mr Owaisi have called
Mr Modi a tyrant for causing enormous difficulties to ordinary people of India.
However one thing for sure is India is marching towards a
cashless society as a rapid pace and it may make business transactions transparent
and remove large scale corruption on a daily basis if successful transition
takes place in the next few months.
India may be able to show a way to many other nations how to
battle corruption and black money effectively through these radical steps.
