My dear friend Ambika had a conversation with a friend of her’s and following is the transcript of this conversation. For the sake of this conversation will call her ‘Pearl’
Pearl : Demonetization is not working. It is a failed policy, people are struggling because of that
Ambika : Although it is inconvenient, for the common people, lot of corrupt people are getting caught, almost on a daily basis !. This is evident from the almost 3000 crore of rupees, recovered in the last 3 weeks, based on Income Tax raids
Pearl : People will keep doing what they are doing. People will be corrupt and nothing can be done to stop black money. Nothing will stop them.
Ambika : Now they will be scared to do it. People will think twice, before hoarding cash. So many people have burned the money or thrown the money in rivers or lakes
Nov 10, 2016 23:29 IST
Shredded currency notes with a face value of several lakh rupees were recovered from a busy area of Bareilly in northwest Uttar Pradesh, police said on Thursday.Found mostly burnt in two sacks near a dump-yard in CB Ganj on Wednesday afternoon, the finely-cut notes “resemble” those in the denominations of the just-invalidated Rs 500 and Rs 1,000, according to a senior official.
http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/rs-500-1000-notes-found-floating-in-ganga-river-in-up-1624316
November 11, 2016 18:03 IST
Old School Notes Of Rs 500 And Rs 1,000 Found Floating In Ganga. The no-longer-in-use 500 and 1000-rupee notes were spotted by people bathing in the river in Mirzapur in Uttar Pradesh.
Pearl : Okay, may be people will become afraid. But current laws are not sufficient. PM should have taken more steps to reduce corruption in Indian society
Ambika :PM doesn’t work alone. He works with other IAS ( Indian Administrative service )officers, and his democratically elected cabinet members. Many of the IAS officers, have been working with this bureaucratic system for so long and they know the in and outs of Indian democratic, bureaucratic system. They realize that any major change cannot happen in a fortnight. They have regular meetings with PM and give him updates about the situation of the country. This is clearly evident from the several news items published in the last few months, which shows that the preparation and planning for demonetization was undertaken for this operation almost since a year.
Going by a number of decisions taken since February this year, it appears the Cabinet has been preparing for a cashless India from long before November 8.
- By installing electronic modes of payment at 70 central government departments they saw digital transactions soar to 1.4 crore and worth Rs 3,250 crore.
- The Centre also persuaded electricity distribution companies and state governments to install such payment modes.
- A non-tax receipt portal, bharakosh.gov.in, was developed to enable users to make non-tax nine payments for as many as 237 categories of payments including for spectrum charges, RTI applications and the like.
- To encourage small merchants to accept digital payments without passing on associated charges to customers, the merchant discount rate on debit cards was waived until December 31 this year.
- Not everyone can afford smartphone and most mobile phone users in India use feature phones. To enable mobile banking on these simpler phones, USSD charges were reduced to Rs 0.50 per SMS from Rs.1.50 per SMS to Rs.0.50. An application for mobile phone payments in four languages was also developed.
- As for mobile banking on smartphones, the National Payments Corporation of India developed a Unified Payment Interface (UPI) application which 27 banks have already adopted.
Pearl : But he is still not doing enough
Ambika : PM is not an autocrat. He heads and listens to the people who report to him. At least we have to agree, PM is trying to do something. If you think about Indian freedom fighting, we cannot forget the sacrifices our forefathers have done, to restore freedom for this great nation. If they also had thought, about the inconvenience caused to them, we wouldn’t even be sitting and talking like this
Pearl : I don’t agree, British raj gave us everything. Without them, we wouldn’t amount to anything
Ambika :Every non biased historian will tell you, how much Indian and other colonies were looted under the government of British raj
During the first period of hundred years, i.e., from 1757 to 1857, British looted a huge amount of resources from India. During this period cottage industries in India were totally destroyed due to the colonial strategy followed by the British rulers.
Dadabhai Naoroji, a distinguished economist of India, in his famous paper the ‘Poverty in India’ (1876) analysed that the huge amount of drain of capital assets wealth from India which started after 1857 was mainly responsible for the economic backwardness in India. Even after the transfer of power of crown in 1858, the drain still continued and it was mostly in the form of Home Charges.
Pearl : So many people don’t have bank account, how do you expect them to exchange money ?
Ambika: PM has told so many times, everyone should have bank account and aadhar account. This is clearly seen in the case of making cash transfer for subsidies to teh bank accounts of people, helps millions of Indians. Still some people chose not to create bank account or make use of the aadhar accounts. People were given multiple window period to file for their unaccounted wealth, but they didn’t heed his voice.
Pearl : Poor people or people in the villages may not know about all these – demonetization, creating bank accounts and so on
Ambika: If you ever venture to a village, you could see common people, the so called ‘uneducated’ people speaking about politics, sports and other generic topics, while sitting under a tree, or in the tea/ coffee shop or in the barber shop. You cannot just put a blanket statement and say, people are not aware of anything, especially people in the villages. With the advent of TV and mobile phone, people are regularly being kept upto date about things that happen around them. If they are really unaware, how come they talk about all the current affairs ?
Pearl : Banks don’t help anybody
Ambika: Modi, cannot go to every bank and make sure, people do their job. Every citizen in this country has the right to raise their voice, if the bank staff has not done the duty. If you have been reading news, you could find that most of the bank employees have been applauded for their work, especially working extra hours and also on the weekend. Unfortuately many bank employees even lost thier lives due to over work and exertion
Pearl : You do not understand the difficulties faced by the common people. Moreover, since you don’t travel by train, you don’t know the inconvenience incurrecd by the common man
Ambika: Any socieity will have areas that it needs to improve. As you rightly said, since I do not travel by train and I have two options
- use another mode of transport : I use bus to commute to my native place and they provide really good comfort and helps me reach on time
OR
- Travel by whichever means you like, but do not keep complaining about it.
Similarly if you find uncomfortable traveling by bus or by auto, within the city, use cab instead. Both Ola and Uber offer really good service, in and around Bangalore. Why do you want to travel by a mode of transport that you do not prefer, and keep complaining about it ? I simply do not understand.
Pearl : Swachh bharath is a total waste
Ambika: In varanasi, it was totally polluted but an effort was undertaken to clean up the banks of the river. Across India, people have taken this very seriously and groups like ‘Ugly Indian’ ( featured in TED talks ) have taken this effort to the next level
Pearl : Why are people peeing and shitting on the road. That is so disgusting.
Ambika: People grew up in an environment, especially people who migrated from the villages, are not accustomed to the concept of using public restroom, let alone find one, which is close to where they stay. And even the cities, especially in the outskirts, there are not enought toilets and restrooms for pople who inhabit these areas and hence they are forced to relieve themselves where there is an open space. Although the government has taken to war foot approach to provide these facitlies, it will be years before it could be accessed by all the people of this nation
Pearl : These people never learn, it’s all because of these uneducated people
Ambika: Even in our office, even though there are dustbins, people put the coffee cups in the shrubs. When you teach people the way it is supposed to be done, they learn. Sometimes people just need to be taught what is the right thing. Aryabhatta, bhaskaracharya, were so good at the their profession. It’s not that, there is no hope. There were great people in the past and in the present too. Moreover in our country if someone is disabled, we respect and support them. In many so called ‘civilized’ countries, kids are being bullied.
Pearl : True, they don’t worry about repercussion. There is so much drub abuse. And mostly it’s because of broken homes
Ambika : So why are you not bothered by all these things in those countries ?
Pearl : I want to ignore those things
Ambika : Why can’t you ignore the same way here ? If you cannot ignore, why don’t you do something about it ? In our outreach program, organized by my company, which is targetted for less priveleged kids, we teach the kids about even basic things, like washing hands, basic etiquette and also help them with their home work. You cannot expect change, without doing anything about it
Pearl : All these things will remain as it is, India will never improve, and we will never be better
Ambika : atleast we are trying, we are suporting our prime minister. Whether it will work or not, is not upto us. But I am sure the results are on the way