Truly, the Opposition is incapable of bipartisanship. Instead of graciously acknowledging that with one stroke Narendra Modi may have found work for tens of crores of Indians, it continues to bray for his blood. This is just not done.
But levity aside, we think the Prime Minister is a victim of his own self-image of a doer, a Dabaang, if you please. He reckoned he could single-handedly do all the heavy lifting needed to implement a gigantic project like the demonetisation of 86% of all notes in circulation. A bit of humility would have served his, and the peoples’, cause well. Grappling with the vital nitty-gritty in advance, and not after the horse had bolted on the night of 8 November, would have saved tens of millions of the poor needless trouble.
But, we suspect, the shock and awe might have been part of Modi’s grand design. Unless the poor feel first-hand the pain of demonetisation, they cannot be expected to experience the vicarious pleasure of the neighbourhood black marketer, the unscrupulous builder, the extortionist moneylender, et al forfeiting their ill-gotten hoards. The Germans have a very fine word for such a universal human failing: schadenfreude. Modi understands the popular mind better than any other leader around.
Unlike the average Joe in the US, who elected Donald Trump unmindful that the real estate billionaire had self-confessedly contributed zilch to the public purse, ordinary Indians tend to look at the rich with suspicion, nay, even contempt. Call it jealousy, or sour grapes, but being wealthy in India is bound to cause a great deal of heartburn and evoke suspicions of tax theft and/or worse.
Therefore, the more the likes of Mamata Banerjee and her phony comrade-in-arms, Arvind Kejriwal, enact the shoddy street theatre, the more likely it is that the aam aadmi will relegate his own hardships way behind the pursuit of the larger national objective. Ordinary Indians equate black money with corruption. For them ridding the system of black money must be a bipartisan goal. And if Modi has hit the moneybags and other dhan pashus where it hurts the most, the shrillness of the critics cannot be music to ordinary people. It is tantamount to using the poor to protect the filthy rich.
Indeed, the West Bengal Chief Minister’s anxiety to have the entire demonetisation process rolled back causes suspicion. After all, most veterans of the Sharada and Narada scams populate her ministry and party. Also, the main hub of the counterfeit currency lies in her state. Malda is the epicentre of the counterfeit industry, some of it manufactured there, while the bulk smuggled through the near-open international border. It is also an unedifying fact that the bulk of the people involved happen to be members of the minority community, with some of them associated with the ruling Trinamool Congress now and with the CPI(M) previously.
As for Kejriwal, that faux defender of common man, not long, ago he was caught red-handed converting crores of black money into white. There is talk that the war chest for Punjab was laid waste by demonetisation. Anyway, the Delhi Chief Minister, who talks everything other than about Delhi both in the Assembly and outside, gets a disproportionately high media notice thanks to media’s continuing refusal to read him correctly. The real Kejriwal is the opposite of what he is at pains to project. Period.
But even as the serpentine queues for note-change outside banks and ATMs are bound to shorten in the coming days, as they must, the root cause of black money cannot be uprooted unless there is a serious attempt to reform electoral funding. A recent report revealed that in the decade ending 2015, the Congress and the BJP together received Rs 5,450 crore from “unknown sources”. At Rs 3,323.39 crore, if the Congress’ share was much greater than the BJP’s, it was because the Congress was in power for much of that period.
But if you think that other parties now shouting the loudest against demonetisation were far behind, think again. Given their limited territorial sweep, neither Mayawati’s BSP at Rs 4,48.71 crore nor Sharad Pawar’s NCP at Rs 243.03 crore did badly when it came to getting money from unknown sources.
The question, then, is obvious: How can you be sincere in extinguishing the menace of black money when you yourselves accept it from those who are its main generators, namely big industry and trade? Unless this cosy nexus is broken, and broken it can be if Modi’s belated suggestion for state-funding of polls and simultaneous state and Central polls, finds favour with the political class. But, trust us, there will be no takers in the entire political spectrum for such a revolutionary proposal.
Not even that paper tiger of Indian politics, Sitaram Yechury. He invariably declaims in the Rajya Sabha as if he was addressing the unwashed yet dreamy-eyed mass of the state-funded JNU student body. Lest you think Yechury’s own hands were clean, the CPI(M) in the 2005-15 decade received as much as Rs 471.15 crore in black money.
However, where Yechury’s and Modi’s parties are different—and it is a vital difference which ought to be cherished in the Indian context—is that neither owns his respective party. While Mayawati and Pawar are virtual owners of their parties, having the power to use or misuse the funds the way they wish, the cadre-based BJP and the CPI(M) are not family-owned, probably the only ones aside from the JD(U), which, alas, of late has become the private fiefdom of Nitish Kumar alone.
In the end, back to demonetisation again. How can the critics carry conviction when even independent experts reckon that as much as Rs 3 lakh crore of black currency might end up as waste paper? Imagine what that kind of money can do for to the confidence of a Finance Minister. The UPA had bled the banking sector, with lakhs of crores given away on the say-so of people in power, and that includes a relatively small fry, Vijay Mallya, as well. Refinancing the banking system would be easier once the gains of the ongoing festival of money-burning are finally toted up.
Yes, ordinary Indians are having to stand in queues for their own money. Adequate forethought could have avoided that mass agony. But, then, there was the fear of the word leaking out about the coming calamity for the filthy rich and other hoarders of illicit lucre. At least, they could have got the size of the Rs 2,000 note right so that it could easily fit into the same ATM slots which were meant for the junked Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 notes. Additionally, they could have printed new notes in high-security foreign presses. Anyway, the sooner the economy is re-monetised the better it will be for all law-abiding Indians.