7 Deadly Days of Demonetisation

As the 8th day of demonetisation approaches, death toll rises to 47 while millions go hungry. Serious questions were raised in the Parliament Winter Session, on both, its execution as well as the consequences. The impact of the so-called demonetisation measure of the BJP government is proving to be much grimmer than anticipated. The economy is slowly grinding to a halt, with the poor and daily wage earners being particularly badly hit.

Prabhat Patnaik and a host of others have talked about the futility of these measures, which seeks to focus on the flow of black money, while black money is actually unaccounted or black wealth. This black wealth is stashed in dollar accounts abroad, or in land, gold, jewellery, etc. Demonetisation has very little impact on this black wealth. Govind Acharya, the former RSS ideologue has estimated that even by most optimistic account, demonetisation of the existing Rs. 500 and Rs. 1,000 notes will interdict only 3% of this black wealth.The Modi government’s move, while equally ineffective in countering “black money”, has the added flaw of impinging severely on common people.