The Demonitization Euphoria

The only one thing that keeps coming back in most of the discussions now-a-days is the demonitization debate. I remember the first time I heard our prime minister announce the delegalization of the transaction through currency notes of Rs.500 and Rs.1000 from the midnight of the same day, I was ecstatic. Never before had such an unprecedented move been dared by a leader. I. like many others, considered it to be a masterstroke by the most popular Indian leader currently in the world. However the euphoria was soon to die down in the wake of the aftermath it entailed.

I had always been a 'cashless' person depending largely on the nearby ATMs to fill in my pockets, just sufficient for the week's requirement. Just as always, I had withdrawn just about enough to last me for the week from the ATM the day before and had paid for the monthly salaries and utilities in the morning. The next morning, it was different, I had one or two hundred rupee notes and a few tenors when I realized that all the bigger notes which were so easy to carry had lost their value. But I knew that the morning milk and bread could be managed and my bigger notes could still get my car tanks full. So, I was a happy man. Definitely, I was sure that after what prime minister Modi had done, people like me would be happy in the times to come, while those having bagful of black money would all be toiling hard in front of the banks and other places trying to hide their ill got wealth.

I saw a few television channels showing distress calls about the problems some people were facing out there due to the missing currency notes to spend. But obviously, it must be the people out there in the rural pockets of the country where the banks and banking facilities like the ATMs were not installed out of fear of it getting robbed in midnight, I thought. Those day passed and so did a few more and finally  I was pushed to the edge that I needed some cash in my purse. So happily in the evening, I jogged to the nearby ATM and it was closed, so I walked a few more blocks to find the other close-by ATMs out of cash. Maybe it was not a good day after-all and then people do tend to withdraw cash during the day and so naturally the ATM may have run out of the money I thought.

So next day, instead of starting work, I thought of making a trip to the ATMs and this time with my car. I moved from the first ATM to the second and the next and then the next, almost all were deserted and those where I could locate a guard, I could see him waving out from quite a distance that there was no cash. NO CASH? I mean where could all that cash have gone? I mean, how could it be, was my initial reaction. I have money in the bank and the ATMs are supposed to give me that money anytime and anywhere that I demand and that there can be no power in the world to deny me the right to take out my own money. But ho! Who is listening anyway? The money was not there in the ATMs and gradually I realized that the money was even not there with my bank. I was living out in a fallacy that I could tide over this demonitization crisis and that it was a masterstroke. It had struck me and I was all caught unaware.

I had to move around from queues after queues trying to figure out where could I gain access to the limited supply of cash that the government had allotted for my family's weekly consumption. I was a bit annoyed but would find solace in the thought that what all I was doing was for the good of my country, maybe a bit long term good as now our leaders would explain. At least all have been brought down to the same level of living standards by the currency rationing, for the time being. The rich would be the worst hit, I was still sure, by this socialistic, okay maybe communist, policy.

As the days passed, I could find my vegetable vendor all deprived of the freshness. The other vendors who used to set up their small stalls of tasty streetfood started dwindling. The car cleaner who also doubles up as the vendor for ironning the clothes could be found idling around most of the time during the day. He tells me that there has been a steady decrease in the number of clothes that comes for ironning to him now. As for me, I have found a sweet little ATM where I am able to withdraw two thousand rupees in cash by standing in a queue for just about an hour and a half.