Saturday, December 03, 2016

And yet more venting about the demonetization situation...

...after a talk this morning with a woman, Meena, who has been staying at our place, looking after mum, and who suddenly decided to leave after a fight with the day-attendant. Meena had only been with us for 19 days, so after calculating what we owed her based on the monthly wage, we got around to the matter of how this payment was to be made.

Hardly any cash at home. Of course. (I’m not getting into details of how much time I have spent in the past 3 weeks trying to withdraw money, and not succeeding, in a situation where two people I am responsible for are seriously ill and might well need to go to hospital on an emergency basis as the Delhi weather and pollution levels get worse for the ailing and vulnerable. Including an 88-year-old who knows nothing of debit/credit cards, is accustomed to having at least 70-80K in her house in cash for contingencies, and is getting psychologically very affected by this whole business of being unable to withdraw her own money from the bank account she has had for decades. Jana Dhana Manaa, as Tagore never wrote.)

Meanwhile Meena doesn’t have a bank account. She showed up at our place today still looking worried but also hopeful, explaining how someone else she worked for had told her about the concept of the “Self”-addressed cheque. What this person presumably told her was that *anyone* could take such a cheque to the bank and withdraw money with it, but through miscommunication and lack of basic understanding, this in Meena’s mind became: “With a ‘Self’ cheque, you can go to *any* bank and withdraw money.”

I could narrate the gist of our conversation in dialogue form here, but that wouldn’t adequately convey the almost panicked look on her face when I tried explaining the rudiments of the banking process. I ran her through it step by step, used what I thought was pure logic: if I had an account in Kotak Mahindra and wrote her a cheque from my cheque-book, why would another bank honour it and give her cash on my behalf? It would have to be Kotak (not that there is a hope in hell these days of getting anything out of them). But at the end she still looked uncertain and then sullen, as if she was becoming convinced we wanted to cheat her by making things more complicated than necessary.

So here’s a woman, living and working in the national capital, reasonably competent at what she does, reduced to a stuttering wreck when discussing basic concepts such as deposits and withdrawals. She is one among millions. Meanwhile, jackasses everywhere – in the government, on Facebook, on WhatsApp, NRIs who know nothing about the India that exists outside their pretty pink bubbles – continue speaking as if everyone in the country has access to 3G and smart-phones, and knows what Paytm is and how to use it. And singing hosannas to a PM whose story is so inspiring because he started off as a chai-wallah – never mind that he gives the impression of being thoroughly out of touch with most ground-level realities.

P.S. on a somewhat related note, with my Airtel wi-fi switching on and off for most of yesterday, I had a late-night talk with a customer-care guy who explained that a cable had broken down and parts of the NCR had had connectivity problems for a few hours.
But of course, the whole country, down to the remotest village, is using Paytm, plastic and net banking. No problem at all.


[Earlier posts about the currency crisis here and here]

8 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. Shrikanth: this is my last comment to you on this subject for a while - and I strongly suggest you think for a few minutes before posting your next comment, otherwise I might exercise the "block" option: no one is saying this state of affairs should continue. What we are saying is that given the many complex realities of this country, it was absurd and cruel (to use the most cautious words I can think of) to do something like this so abruptly. And that's without even taking into account that the government continues to give the impression of not even having thought of the full implications of what it was doing.

    Anyway, I'm signing out now. Again: no more straw-man bullshit from you on my website.

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  3. I feel ur pain. I just had a corrupt fedex guy in India just take the parcel I sent my mom fromthe West where i live. Paid through my ass for it too, and the helplessness u mention is what i am going through right now albeit for a different reason. And yes, I concede that if Modi doesnot follow thus up with persecution of blatant criminals and large scale embezzlers like Malaya, he will lose a big chunk of his popular support including mine and his credibility. The truth is that this gesture will only mean something if it is followed up by persecution of the real bad guys like Mallaya, or by cracking down on the illegal property market where the real black money lies, and tackling the rich with off shore accounts. And those are the real challenges else his fight against black money will remain a token gesture that was far too inconvenient and cruel for a token gesture. And one that could cost him the election. Because the amount of black money being recovered is a very narrow fraction of the real blackmoney which, i have read, lies in the property market and off shore accounts. Hope it gets better for you. Contrary to what it might have appeared in the past or now, i do feel at least some of your pain and predicament. I know you are an atheist but as a theist, i pray the gods watch over your own and see you through your troubles (damn, this always sounds better in my head! But it is well intentioned and sincere as it gets). Cheers

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  4. Finally ! I see someone writing exactly what has been gnawing at me... I stay in Bangalore. It took us years to convince my domestic help to open a bank account. She is a very sharp lady, has picked up English much faster than I could teach it, can read and write in her mother tongue and has single handedly managed to bring up two sons and stewarded a wayward, unreliable husband. And yet she seems to get nervous about banks. For the past year ever since I pressurised her to get an ATM card , she has been reluctant to learn how to use it. She is still not comfortable using phones. As you said, this is the state of a reasonably competent urban dweller, with helpful employers and easily accessible banks and ATMs, and paperwork in place. I shudder to think of the state of others.

    Trying to force someone to learn to swim by throwing them in the deep end of the ocean, while adding sharks and whirlpools, and intermittently disabling their body, seems like a very very very scary thought.



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    1. Tess: many, many people - including some of the sharpest and some of the most sensitive minds in the country - have been writing about this for weeks, in columns and other opinion pieces, in both mainstream media and other widely read outlets. What I have written in these two posts barely scratches the surface of the topic. But yes, on the whole, those of us who are sceptical or openly critical of the move are in a tiny minority compared to those who either don't care about the magnitude of inconvenience or believe that the ends will justify the means (I doubt they would feel this way if their own family members were among those who had died in queues, or otherwise been very badly affected - but then that's how most human minds work.)

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  5. Jai - I totally agree. I have been venting from Day 1. From hour 1, actually. Minutes after the great "shock and awe" announcement, I said, how the hell is this going to work, how will the poor manage, how will the logistics work out. And true enough, chaos continues to rule. Everytime I vent, I get reactions from pious middleclass people suffering from schadenfreude (at last the rick will be taught a lesson)- one told me that the poor are okay standing in the queue in temples for hours, so how is this a problem. As if that is even a good analogy. Even his remark that the notes were worthless - such an irresponsible statement - i know of poor people who got panicked at that news - that their meager stashes were going to be straw. Over the last month I've been trying to explain how to use a bank account, how to look after an ATM card, don't share the card or the pin, cash cheques. It's going to be a long, painful haul even when there are those of us willing to explain the method, what about the millions who will not get that education?

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  6. I also couldn't imagine how otherwise sensible people could defend a terrible inconvenience simply because they believe that it would an even more terrible inconvenience for those hoarding black money, and believe that this magical scheme would solve the problem corruption forever.
    On the same topic - a short BBC radio analysis of Modi's magnificent polling idea: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04jz6sr
    Saranya

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    1. On your first para - that's human behavior. Whenever systems do pathetic things, I kind of think how sane folks did approve of horribly oppressive system like communism for more than 50 years in many countries. It's baffling and somewhat tiring to imagine the extent of idiocy in the system and people (particularly in groups)

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