Ranjona Banerji: What is demonetisation after all?

A shopkeeper holds up a cake prepared on the theme of demonetisation on Christmas eve in Siliguri PicAFPIf 2016 began with terrorists from Pakistan running amok and seemingly unchallenged through an Indian Air Force Station at Pathankot it has ended with the Indian government launching an attack on the people of India on a much larger and more catastrophic scale Indeed everywhere you go demonetisation is the only thing anyone talks about And the one place you have been going to in the past month and a half has been a queue trying desperately to gain access to your own moneyUnless of course you are a supporter of this government and its demonic scheme In that case you have had cash delivered to your homes you have parked your demonetised currency notes in the bank before November 8 you have moved hundreds of thousands of rupees from here to there and you have giggled sang and danced your way down ATM and bank queues searching for a TV camera so that your everlasting joy is there for the world to seeYou have told the world that when people die in a bank queue from a heart attack or from exhaustion or from suffocation that well everyone must die And more importantly for such inconsiderate people who have the temerity to die instead of joyously suffering through Prime Minister Narendra Modirsquos grand scheme how much did they care about soldiers dying at Indiarsquos borders Obviously nothing and in fact no death in India matters at all in anyway except that of soldiers dying at the borders All other deaths are deserved karma their time had come heart conditions life in general death in itself Involuntary dying is now an extreme act of antinationalism devised only to demean both soldiers at the border and the prime ministerOddly as November turned into December and the government changed the rules over and over again the antinational Indian has become louder Itrsquos not just evil liberals and unmentionable writers artists thinkers leftwing Unpatriots the disgusting media and all the usual suspects who are angry with the government and laughing at the prime ministerrsquos excuses It is in sheer desperation Every Man and Every Woman and what a change that is from May 2014 when to laugh at Modi was to be cursed for seven generationsThe lies of the government remain larger than life The problems have shown no sign of abating The prime ministerrsquos last radio broadcast remained a bucketfull of platitudes It accepted problems but then presented an excuse on his governmentrsquos flipflops responding to peoplersquos needs apparently without offering even one solutionIn a desperate need for validation municipal elections are being touted as proof of the peoplersquos love for demonetisation And yet the incompetence of the government cannot possibly be excused by local polls unless you are lacking in common sense or have completely disassociated yourself from realityThe second seems the most likely explanation From the prime minister downwards we hear about beggars who have point of begging card swipe machines the great success of the poor discovering the immense value of a R100 note the rush for people to get mobile wallets as brownie points for the government regardless of whether most Indians have mobile phones or not and finally cheering the opening of several bogus bank accounts even as genuine account holders are harassedAt the end of 2016 we still donrsquot know why this demonetisation exercise was done and that is the greatest act of chicanery played on the Indian public since The Emergency The black money reasoning some humbug detours towards terrorism and counterfeit currency having fallen flat has been replaced now with an urgent need to move India to digitised cash In which case the secrecy makes little or no sense Twists and turns by the government and the RBI on rules have only given wriggle room to the corruptSadly for the supporters of this government and the ruling party they elected it to power placing all its trust in the magical and miraculous powers of Narendra Modi alone And what they have got in return is clear evidence that this government and perhaps Modi too does not trust the people of India even one little iotaWhat a way to go into 2017 No Irsquom not having a partyRanjona Banerji is a senior journalist You can follow her on Twitter ranjona Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycom