A year with new notes, same old story
Exactly a year back I woke-up with a different feeling, a feeling of optimism, a feeling of pride, a feeling we were on course to achieve a long due dream. These feelings were aroused by the announcement of our beloved Prime minister of India, Shri. Narendra Modi, his move to make 86% of the running currency void, an audaciously bold move to combat and wipe out black money (at-least in cash). We all knew at the back of our heads that the deal seems too good to be true, yet rallied along with hope against hope that our beloved prime minster had set on course.
Little did we know the cash in supply would be so low, that most had to wait to get their own money. The initial few months of panic did not effect me, cash and I always had a bad relationship and we never stayed with each other for long, hence I had a forced marriage with plastic money (debit\/credit cards). I continued to use cards where ever I went. Just because it did not effect me, doesn‘t mean it never effected others too, every time I would see wide spread panic I couldn‘t help but empathetically be in their shoes and imagine their plight. How they had to wait in both lines, firstly to deposit their old money, and secondly to withdraw their own money. We all understood the pain, few even-more emphatically, correlating to our brave jawans standing to defend our country.
I was battered with a huge dilemma , on one side we had people who didn't have money and on other side we had politicians raided with crores of new notes. We couldn‘t blame the system, the rich and powerful had their way out, breaking the very backbone of demonetisation. The rich were converting all the black money right under our nose, as the others waited in queues.
If you play a game of football and every-time the opponent shot the ball and kick anywhere and was deemed as a goal, would you celebrate fair play? No right? That is exactly what happened with demonetisation, the goal posts were shifted from black money to fake notes, fake notes to terrorism, from terrorism to digital economy. And the irony is nothing changes, absolutely nothing. They kept kicking right between our legs and kept shouting GOALLLLLL GOALLLLLLL.. and we had to understand and absorb the pain.
In defence to Modi ji, his intentions may have been right but the results don‘t match. You just cant pacify and praise intentions. I don't want to take away credit from our beloved prime minister ji, I am sure no man in his right frame of mind would want such an initiative fail, mistakes where made somewhere, but its human to make mistakes. Apologies and setting a correction course is the most sane thing to do.
I am sure our beloved prime minister has a master plan to recover the money spent in the massive colossal mistake, we still wish you luck, fix our economy and change our country. With you or without you, our love for country will never die, and we will always hope for the best.
I only hope we don‘t have to remember another landmark decision by this government as another disaster after a year, I hope GST is re-looked at and the tax number are re-calibrated to suit the poor and the lower middle class.
The lesson learnt in this one year is - If a deal is too good to be true, its probably not.