Our Prime Minister Hon’ble Narendra Modi’s surgical strike against black money hoarders and corruption has stunned the whole country to silence. It is quite evident that this move will be recorded in India’s history. Talking about its effect specifically on Gujarat we can see that it had both shocks and surprises as well.
On April 1, 2016 itself, a Gujarati evening newspaper Akila ran a story that said that the government, on completing two years, is removing the Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes from circulation in a bid to end corruption and black money hoarding. The report was published with the headline “Chalan Maathi 500-1000 ni note naabud karwa nirnay”. The story said this was a historic decision against bribe, black money, corruption, fake currency and the evil of terrorism.
It was later cleared by the editor of the newspaper that it was just a prank made on 1st April ie. April fool’s day. They themselves weren’t aware that their prank would take a shape of reality in a matter of months!
In Aamli Menpur village of Dhanpur taluka of Gujarat’s Dahod district, people have gone back to the barter system as there is no change available for new RS 2000 notes. Thus the farmers there are bartering maize for groceries and as a side effect the price of maize has gone down from 250 to 200 per 20 kgs.
Also there are long ques witnessed in Gujarat highways as the toll plaza operators are refusing to accept high denomination notes because they are running out of change.
In the middle of this chaos, there is a small village in Gujarat, called Akodara, which is unmoved by the demonetization move. Around 80 kms from Ahmedabad, located inside Sabarkantha district and Himmatnagar town, business is as usual here, as farmers are buying/selling their produces, people are easily purchasing their daily needs and there are absolutely no queues outside the only ATM present in the village.
And the reason is that Akodara is India’s first and only digital village, which doesn’t use cash! Last year, ICICI Bank had adopted this village, and introduced a slew of ‘digital reforms’, which also included a major push for being cashless. Thus only if we visit this village in Gujarat we can realize that this digital move of our PM is actually so useful if implementation goes on till the root.
Apart from this, wedding which used to be a lavish affair earlier had now been successfully completed in just 500 bucks in Gujarat. A couple got married in just 500 as the guests were served only tea and biscuits due to the cash crunch.
People who had excess cash they bought gold bars and jewellery till late midnight. For jewellers, it turned out to be a goldmine. This is what a prominent jeweler in Ahmedabad told The Hindu while his interview.
I personally think it’s a chicken or egg situation, as we still are trying to figure out if the decision is good or bad. All we can do is to go with the flow and hope to convert from rural India to Digital India.
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