How I Went From Honesty to Shamelessly Dealing in Black Money

Thanks to a badly designed policy, even law-abiding citizens are becoming corrupt agents to tackle money problems.

True confession – I am no economist. I report only what I see, go through and hear of on the streets of Kishanganj and Bhagalpur in Bihar, since the fateful announcement on November 8.

On the first two days, the 9th and 10th of November, there was a virtual shut down in Bhagalpur and Kishanganj.

On the evening of 9th we scoured ATMs in an e-rickshaw, with no success in finding the elusive 100 rupee note. Over the next two days we struck a credit deal with our e-rickshaw driver, Toto Bhaiyya, promising him payment as soon as the ATMs opened. We are still living on credit with him. He has gone on to entertain other customers with change to pay. He depends on what he earns daily.

He is living on credit for the last two days at the dhaba where he eats, the dhaba owner is living on credit with the vegetable seller, who in turn owes the middleman at the Mandi and so on… you get the picture.

Of Empty Classrooms and Small Shop Troubles

Meanwhile, in Kishanganj, we saw these scenes outside almost every bank, every ATM today.

This photo was taken at 3:30 pm:

“There’s no money in the banks or the ATMs, I went to five this morning”, Dharmendra, my colleague and a native of Kishanganj said.

So we did what has become the new norm of currency exchange at various scrap shops (kabaadi ki dukaan) – give a Rs 500 note and get Rs 400 in return.

Further out of the main town, there were no queues, or ATMs or banks, but there were not many students in the classes of the government schools we visited. In one particular school, there were two students present out of a class of 70. When asked about the reason for such low attendance, the headmaster said –

“Most parents have sent their kids to stand in the queue outside banks. Most of these parents are labourers in farms and can’t afford to skip another day at work”.

Chemists and hospitals are supposed to be accepting the old notes. Thank god, you say. Well, several chemists, we found, had closed shop.

Those that are open are facing a different problem. They don’t have change to give out. So the caveat before you buy anything is “Give me change or buy stuff worth Rs 400 or more”. To get one strip of a painkiller, we had to buy things we really didn’t need. We ended 25 rupees richer.

I am not refusing to take the old notes, but I have been doing that for the last two days and I have no change left. I went to the bank, they had no money. My business is down by 90%. I suspect this will go on for a month at least and my losses will be massive.

Jai Saha, owner of a small medical store in Kishanganj

Small shops have either shut down their business or are running into massive losses. Take the case of Gaurav Roy, who runs a small sweet shop near the Bihar-Bengal border. He is popular with farmers who work in the area, taxi drivers and e-rickshaw drivers. He has two problems. One that his business is down by 75%. Second, people are handing him Rs 10 coins and not accepting them back as change.

I don’t know why people now think the Rs 10 coin is also fake. I have collected hundreds of these in the last two days. I’ve even kept newspaper cut-outs to convince them that it’s real. But it is not working. It’s the last thing I needed.

Gaurav Roy, owner of sweet shop near the Bihar-Bengal border

From what we hear and understand, people are finding unique ways to deal with the crisis. Blanket bans always have unintended loopholes.

Thank You, Badly Designed Policy!

The step may have been a bold, much needed one. Maybe it had to be kept a secret, but obviously there had to be massive planning, organising and then monitoring to ensure that there was no chaos.

This is a situation that actually calls for a war-room to be set up somewhere. Who is monitoring what is happening at ATMs and banks in places like Kishanganj and Bhagalpur, which FYI, is 90% of this great country? How is the government ensuring that those who don’t have the privilege of taking to social media to voice their troubles, are taken care of also? For them this is just one more problem added to what they already live with – poverty, pollution, violence, inequality.

At this point, everything’s a mess! And demonetisation has only compounded it. So, we trade illegally to get 4 hundred rupee notes to buy milk, take credit from whoever we can and make half white, half black payment deals at restaurants (I just did that at lunch today).

Congratulations, badly designed policy!  You have made a corrupt citizen out of countless law abiding people who only wish they were rich enough to horde black money.

(Padmini Vaidyanathan is a citizen journalist who currently accepts blingy shoes as payment for the work she does. In a parallel universe, very similar to ours, called the Children’s Scrappy News Service, Padmini is often found trying to find the truth.)