In an interesting coincidence, our daring new PM walks
across the 50-day lifeline he asked for, and we people walk through another brand-new
year filed with hope and dreams. New years are good to have. To me it is that
time of the year you feel so special for no tangible reason whatsoever. You
somehow just feel quite happy and excited and you share the joy with your
friends and family. It’s a good time to be in. And I so much wish we all have
many more of such days so that the happiness and brotherhood (sisters included
as well) keep coming back to us often.
If New Years are about brotherhood, I’ve been lucky this
year. I just had my 50 day ‘extended’ New Year where I had many a chance to feel
the brotherhood over and over again. I suddenly started speaking to complete
strangers I met at ATMs and bank counters. And they were extremely courteous
people with lots of patience and hope. I mean, did we even notice these human
bodies strolling in front of us prior to demonetization! But now suddenly, over
the last 50 days we all started feeling an invisible bond of commonness – the
frustration of running around in vain for proof of our money!
A day before Christmas I spent around 20 minutes in a shop
trying to swipe my card for something I needed and had just bought. I then moved
towards the 4 ATMs available in the locality where I got to meet some of my
‘new’ brothers and sisters. To give credit where it should be, one ATM even
told me “I am being Serviced”. Though at that time it felt like “Screw You!”, I
am impressed at the technological advancement where these machines too have
learned to be nice to people.
Back at the store I again tried my card for around 5 minutes
and finally promised to pay him the next day in cash. Yeah! “Mere Pyaare
Deshwasi….by hook or crook I will get my
hands onto some currency notes and I shall pay thy money!” I’m not sure if it
was the Mere Pyaare part or the fact that he knew me through one of my employees
that did the trick. Anyways he let me go with the things with a verbal promise
to return with cash. I still doubt it’s the hindi that really got at him!
Two days after Christmas I walked into a bank counter to pay
my son’s school fee. Something that I had been doing for the past 3 years and
never took me more than 5-10 min max. And here I was waiting for my turn to
come, close to an hour after entering the bank! To be frank with you, that
actually was a confusing phase for me. One side of my brain told me to feel
proud that I am supporting my nation by standing in a queue for something that
actually needs to take just 5 min. In one of those moments I thought of our
jawans standing at the borders and I felt proud to be able to stand there
inside an air conditioned banking counter with cozy sofas, water dispensers and
even toilets that were friendly to the physically challenged.
But some other part of my brain was telling me that someone
had just fucked up my life. It has been close to 2 months since I saw anything
other than a 2000 rupee note from an ATM. And even that has become a rare vision,
seen only if I am lucky enough to be at the right place at the right time.
Sounds familiar, right?
Now at least some of you will tell me that I am an elitist
and that’s why I don’t want to go wait in the queue during the early morning
hours in hope for the ‘money-men’ to come and load the ATMs. Yeah! It does
sound very empowering and socialist. But you calling me an elitist is just like
calling Osama Bin Laden a Saint because he chose to leave the comforts that his
billion dollar empire could guarantee.
Over the past 50 days my daring government has brought out
74 notifications and announcements that included several roll backs. To be
precise 53 from RBI and 21 from the Central Government. Reactive Governance is
not a bad thing. But when we are dealing with something as important as what we
were told the government was trying to do, I’m not sure this is an appreciable
strategy. The transition from talking about black money to focusing on digital
payments without any measure whatsoever to strengthen the existing technology
back bone is not very confidence inspiring. The fact that even as we crossed
our 50 day mark my prime minister was unable to give me a clear roadmap for
removing these monetary ‘laxman rekhas’ is quite disturbing. I’m still
unsure if I should wait for a Ram or a Raavan to take me out of this mess. More
importantly I’m not even sure what more ‘Agni
Pareekshas’ I’ll have to go through to
prove wrong every other doubt that arises in this particular Ram’s mind.
Sometimes I wonder if there really was not a better way to
do these things. The knee jerk reaction by the finance ministry when they
realised that the money coming back into the banking system might just exceed
the value of the ones demonetized and the rollback within 24 hours due to
public outrage is not something that reassures me that my government really
knows what it is doing. If we agree to the requests by Bangladesh and Nepal to
convert the Indian currencies lying there we surely will cross the demonetized
value even now. And then there are the alleged crores lying in cooperative
societies. The fact that the value of notes being deposited back into the
system is higher than what was demonetized is actually proof that illegal
currencies existed in the market. It is also proof that someone somewhere has
made a fortune in helping covert these currencies into legal tender. And my
Government showing signs as to they did not expect this to happen is like a
class 10 student writing a class 7 exam and complaining of an out of syllabus
question!
In between all this, knowing that people from my Governments
party made unprecedently large transactions months before the 8/11 announcement
is disheartening. Knowing that my Government lobbied with international
agencies for cooked up ratings is not very reassuring. My finance minister
coming up with concocted figures to support this move rather than reassuring me
about the ride ahead is quite irritating. Who, atleast with minimum senses,
wants a finance minister to tell him that tax earnings will shoot up in the
initial months of demonetization when people frantically try to bring money
into the system!
At the end of this 50-day period I’ve personally learned a
few lessons. Brand promotion and Governance are two entirely different things.
Good Theatrics should never be equated with Good Governance. And hate/distrust
for one should not be equated with admiration/belief for another.
Unfortunately, these are the things that are now frequently getting mixed up with
us Indians. A little sincere and unbiased introspection would make you
understand what I mean.
Questioning the earlier Governments deeds in the last
60 odd years every time someone raises a doubt, is on one hand ignoring the
fact that every good thing we take for granted today is because of some positive
step taken somewhere in the past. And on the other, it is like saying my murderer
step father is good since my father was a serial killer! Now, a choice we
individually need to make is whether we really want to again wait for ‘the kid’
to cry out that the ‘King is nude’, which he surely seems to be at this point
of time.
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