The country went into a tizzy after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced demonetisation of Rs 500 and 1,000 notes on 8 November with immediate effect.
One cannot dismiss the possible long-term benefits of the currency ban, which has been touted as a “surgical strike” on black money. But the current chaos is proof that the implementation has been poor. People have been struggling to carry out day-to-day activities without enough valid cash in hand.
This leads to the inevitable question: If the decision had been 10 months in the making, why could the government not have planned things out better?
Here are some of the major blunders which Modiji & Co could have avoided.
In less than a week after the announcement, there have been multiple incidents of infants dying and patients suffering because private hospitals have refused to accept old notes for treatment.
While government hospitals have been exempted from the note ban, why wasn’t the same exemption extended to private and charitable hospitals, which allow free treatment?
Also, it’s a grossly incorrect assumption that people belonging to the lower strata of the society do not go to private hospitals. In fact, it has been reported that reliance on private healthcare in rural and urban areas is high. Why, then, were private hospitals not exempted from the note ban?
Changing the size of the new Rs 2,000 note is one of the many things being talked about.
In an effort to revamp the design and give the Indian currency a new face, has the government brought upon itself and the public a huge inconvenience (in the short term at least)?
The size change of the new note means that all the ATM slots of all the machines around the country have to be manually tweaked to accommodate the larger dimensions of the Rs 2,000 note. This obviously means more time and labour, something that could have easily been avoided.
The Narendra Modi-led government had reportedly been planning the roll out of the demonetisation policy for 10 months.
If the decision to scrap Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes was that well-planned, why weren’t enough Rs 100 notes mobilised in the market beforehand, to ease cash flow and save the aam aadmi a lot of trouble?
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had even ordered banks to set up ATMs which will be stocked with Rs 100 notes, according to an IANS report. Why wasn’t this done?
By pumping in more Rs 100 notes into banks right after the announcement, the government would have ensured both its objective of introducing the policy and preventing the unnecessary distress that people are facing right now.
With the currency ban and the consequent cash crunch, people don’t have enough lower denomination notes to meet their daily needs.
What if the government had allowed the use of old notes up to Rs 5,000 for purchasing everyday items like groceries ? If the aim is to curb large transactions, why impose inconvenience on people indulging in smaller, everyday monetary transactions?
Yes, there can’t be a monitoring mechanism to check whether a person has used the old notes for transactions worth Rs 5,000 only, but it might have made life simpler for many people out there.
Here’s the thing – any attempts to spend that freshly minted Rs 2,000 note will go in vain, bringing us to another blunder.
Printing new Rs 2,000 notes without having adequate lower denomination currency notes like Rs 100, Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 is both meaningless and stupid.
Stories and reports abound about people who have the new Rs 2,000 note but can’t use it for transactions because the shopkeeper or whoever does not have enough change to give back. The government could have thought this through, introducing the new lower denomination currencies before the purple coloured one.
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