Demonetisation : Political gimmick or Robust Strategy

More than fifty days has passed since the evening of 8th November when honourable Prime Minister of India declared that 500 and 1000 notes will sieze to be legal tender. But the question still remains unanswered-  "the decision which had its share of effect( read: chaos) in every nook and corner of the country was successful to what extent?"

Honestly speaking I didn't see much of a change other than people being denied their own hard earned money, increased importance  of banking institutions and  ATM where people stood in long and slow moving queues, people frantically searching for change to no avail and by the end of the year almost 90% of scrapped notes getting back in the system.

Though somewhere, at some point, certain people with black money were caught, it was mostly common people who suffered especially small business owners. In a country where more than 65% of population still lives in rural areas and almost 20,000 villages are yet to get electricity, the Prime Minister wants everyone to go cashless. The very idea of it sounds absurd. At least in the shorter span of time.

Demonetisation do sound like a robust strategy but all its fizz was gone the way it was implemented so much so that even the government had to frequently change the reason behind the move from fight against corruption to fight against terrorism and finally toward a Digital India. Yes the term digital India do sound attractive but the fact that almost one fourth of the population is still not literate tells a different story altogether.Good luck teaching people how to use ATM cards who can't even write their name properly.

Corruption is prevalent in India in its  deepest  and darkest form. And I respect our PM for atleast trying but what I personally feel is, between, corrupt people easily exchanging  their notes using middlemen, buying Jandhan accounts & gold and RBI changing rules on daily basis, somewhere, "Implementation failed the Idea".

Government might attribute no mass outbreak and protest against note ban, as it happened in Venezuela, to successful "realisation of idea" but I guess it was because of our tendency to adjust and a poor person is more likely to silently stand in queue to get his money rather  than taking on the system. The official figures of death due to standing in queues is more than 100 and government doing nothing for them, not even publicly accepting it, is really sad.

The best part of democracy is that we can voice our opinion and what I feel is even though the idea of Demonetisation was very brave and in good faith, the preperation and pre planning to execute in on 125 billion people was inadequate.
Next time, I hope, when government launches such mass level reform against corruption it should seriously consider the effects on common people who are mostly honest and poor.

Whether it's a political gimmick or a robust strategy to fight corruption, I will leave it on you to decide for yourself.

(Disclaimer : I might not be a Bhakt but I trust our Prime Minister to take the right decision in the favour of the nation.)