Dinesh Kamath's Editorial 'Poor common man is confused' that was published in Newsband

Poor common man is confused

Demonetisation has both supporters and opposition. Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar was all praise for Prime Minister Narendra Modi for making the demonetisation move. Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray feels that people who had voted Bharatiya Janata Party to power were betrayed. But the Sena cannot afford to break up with the BJP at this juncture. Mamata Banerjee and her Trinamool Congress with Left Front plan to fight the demonetisation drive. Some see merit in the demonetisation drive although they recognise the difficulties in implementation.

Many politicians are forced to pretend that they appreciate the demonetisation move since none can afford to be seen as directly opposing measures to clean up black money and weed out counterfeits. So they make cashless banks and shuttered ATMs the issue. They are reluctant to criticise the move for fear of being labelled supporters of black money hoarders and counterfeiters. Indian political parties do not seem to be led by principles.

Almost all educated young people are in favour of the demonetization move.

While the BJP is talking of black money demolition and cashless economy - the completely unorganized opposition parties are politically fighting the move of Demonetization, which the BJP and particularly Modi seem to say would tackle black money. The opposing politicians have no economics analysis and plan for alternate actions.

Dr. Manmohan Singh says that implementation of the Demonetization drive has been a "monumental blunder", although he does not counter the need to fight against black money. Those who oppose demonetisation believe that with the nullifying of 86% of the Cash circulation, the life blood of the nations (Cash transaction) became chocked, and the exponentially spiralling impacts wold soon send Indian economy into negative levels. According to them, the total number of notes to be printed for replacement are about 2,500 Cr (500's and 1000's). The Currency printing capacity is 300 Cr notes per month, at 100% efficiency. That means, a total of over 8 months are needed for total replacement, and many problems would crop up

But the supporters of demonetisation argue that the key number is how much of the money was in circulation. That's the amount that needs replacement. Furthermore, some of the money that was in circulation will be replaced by lower denominational notes as well, along with electronic payment. In fact, demonetization amounts to a massive transfer of wealth from businessmen to the government. This is what they would expect from a socialist and yet the opposition comes from everybody who has parroted the socialist dogma for 60 years. That is a great irony.

In this scenario, the only person getting affected is the confused common man on the street. For him these political squabble don't mean a thing - what is important for him is, whether he can feed his family on a daily basis. Right? The supporters of demonetisation say that one with good conscience cannot oppose this good move, hence opposition parties resort to opposing the practice in order to scuttle this move and continue to enjoy their stashed cash.