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-   -   Government scraps Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes! (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/shifting-gears/181570-government-scraps-rs-500-rs-1000-notes-184.html)

https://indianexpress.com/article/bu...ation-5357295/


Well of course. Apparently they had all gained employment standing in line for the "black money" hoarders. :)

I was a person who thought this move will remove all the black money from the country. I also thought our country will be free from parallel economy, GDP will zoom, tax levels will come down etc. Sadly nothing changed! Only the common man, unorganized sector and their employees have gone through all the pain.

I agree to many of you who has put forward points against this move.

Don’t be depressed. A lot of folks have had their expectations dashed. Just drives home the point that nothing changes even if the political regime changes. Welcome to India. :Frustrati

I want to put two of my observations from the DeMo time. Not that I am trying to extrapolate these to the larger population.

Apart from usual harassment of no cash and long queues in ATMs, here are the below two

Our house maid is an poor elderly lady. She supports her husband who sells vegetables in a push cart during the day and occupies a prime footpath spot in the evenings again to sell vegetables. They buy from the whole sellers almost on daily basis in cash. They are illiterates, not having a bank account.
DeMo came as a lightning to them. Not knowing what to do with their little saved cash, not trusting any bank or rather not in a position to enter a bank cause of their illiteracy, not ever operating any atm, they handed their notes to me and I exchanged these.

But they could not sell enough to earn daily. Their sellers would never accept credit. They lost their clientele and had to sell their pushcart. Slowly they lost their prime footpath spot. Finally they wound up their vegetable selling business. Eventually their health gave in and she too lost her maid jobs.



During DeMo, I went to the Avenue road wholesale market (bangalore guys will know) to buy some material for the cheap price it offers. Not having much cash, I offered them every other digital method like neft, paytm, credit card but the shopkeepers would not accept anything but cash. I had to return back. I enquired with one of them, how are they managing? He said sales are down to 20% of normal, but they are willing to wait it out.

So you or I can see who won and who lost.

Fordday.

I was amongst the large populace that cheered when De-Mo was announced and was hardly affected by De-Mo after affects since the little money I have has has been informed to the tax men. I escaped the immediate fallout since I traveled out of country on the day of the announcement and was back after a fortnight or so.

Though I did see the impact of the same on small vendors near my place, it was callous on the part of the government to harass and deprive people working hard to make amends to the bad deal fortune dealt with them at their birth. I hope they make their votes talk.

My esteem towards the PM diminished to a great extent due to De-Mo this was not so much for the failure of the process but more due to his inability to concede an obvious mistake.

Stumbled on an alternative narrative, as with other alternate theories - reader's discretion advised :-) .
This theory is that US & RaghuramRajan & the Govt colluded/collaborated for realizing De-Mo

http://norberthaering.de/en/27-germa...-role-in-india
https://2012-2017.usaid.gov/india/pr...payments-india


I can cite my experience post De-Mo AND GST implementation, cash was still king in the construction material field in Bengaluru, but digital payments were being accepted with a 2-3% surcharge. This was true for large well known brands as well.

Broke my heart this story. It may have been just an extended inconvenience for us but for hard working people like them earning little money, it absolutely broke their back. Partisan pov aside this shoul'sd shame us all. How could we let this happen to the most vulnerable people of our society.

i have noticed in the neighbourhood that most of the shops have stopped using card machines now and have gone back entirely to cash. They returned it since they feel the 1-2 percent fee is not good for small vendors. So we are back to cash economy again.

That is what I wanted to convey.

While for us it was a minor inconvenience, DeMo hit the most vulnerable section of the society the hardest and many could not recover.

The intended targets must been sitting pretty waiting for things to settle down, to carry on as before.

NaMo & DeMo remain a fiercely debated topic :)

I read a nice report recently. Though it's mostly about Russia, I see similar patterns in our country. Do give it a read - https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html. This page gives a brief about the paper. You can download the complete text in PDF from the right side menu.

A tiny excerpt from the report (ring any bells?)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nknYtlOvaQ0
There is a video of how it has been applied by the US government. I suspect the Indian government (and fanboys) are not too far behind, given their behavior in this thread so far

That's nicely explained. I remember watching a few of their earlier videos - the borders series specifically. They seem to be publishing nice balanced content. I wasn't a regular so far. Bookmarked now. Thanks for sharing. :thumbs up

Friends a.k.a Mitron in hindi, now get ready for a rehaul of the "Jurassic Era" cash chest management system of the RBI and it's banks. This will ensure that circulation of low and high denomination notes are high - provided there's that much physical notes in the system which clearly isn't the case - and isn't going to be as well as the new 100 is the 200 (rarely seen), while the old 100 is withering away due to extensive use, and the green 500 is all but worn out with limited print orders for new notes of the same denomination and 2000 note being slowly shunned or gotten rid off at the earliest for fear of another debacle especially since new 2000's will never be printed again. One way or the other, our citizens are going to be forced into doing something they don't want to do- which begs the question- who is the Government working for?

Well I too respected and expected a lot from our PM - but completely gave up after the 'Gareebon ki Sarkaar' announces schemes that sound good but have a gotcha for the same folks - be it LPG, loan waivers, MSP increase, bank accounts etc etc.

As to alternate theories, I read something similar on zerohedge right around the time DeMo was announced. Felt it too far fetched at the time, but now I'm not sure, after several actions - there is a pattern. If we apply the Cui Bono principle, it does not look too good.

I can vouchsafe that the trend to be legit has improved. Of course old habits die hard. In any case any reduction in black money is to be welcomed.

Cash increases corruption and is used by anti social elements and those who want to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. Now that I've had a taste of cashless, I will never go back to using cash. I dislike carrying my wallet these days and mostly just keep it in my backpack. Cashless is the future.

I don't understand the resistance to going cashless. It's the future, just like electric cars are.