• As soon as Note Ban was announced, the usurers and money lenders and dalals began offering to exchange old Rs 500 notes for Rs 400. The poor, desperate for cash to survive, were the ones who were thus cheated of their precious hard-earned cash.

  • Rs 230 crore in new currency has been seized in IT raids since demonetisation! This amounts to roughly 96410 weekly cheque withdrawals of Rs 24000 each and 925532 daily ATM withdrawals. We can only imagine how many crore were not yet discovered or recovered.

  • Manish Sharma, a BJP candidate in Raniganj, W Bengal in the assembly polls of April-May was arrested with six others including a coal mafia man in Kolkata with bundles of cash amounting to Rs. 33 lakh, most of it in brand new 2,000 rupee notes. Sharma, though expelled from BJP some months back, is close to BJP MP Babul Supriyo.

  • A BJP youth leader JVR Arun in Salem, Tamil Nadu said “For the progress of our country, let’s stand in a queue.” Soon after, he was arrested with Rs 20.5 lakhs cash, including 926 new Rs 2000 notes!

  • In Gujarat, on November 16, days after the Note Ban, a bribe amount of Rs 2.9 lakh in brand new Rs 2,000 notes was paid!

These are just some of the new forms of corruption Note Ban has spawned. People in queues did not get cash but the corrupt did! Now, the Government says - blame the banks for this corruption.

Yes, some bank and RBI officials are no doubt involved in this corruption – while most ordinary bank employees are working day and night coping with the Note Ban crisis and facing the wrath of the people.

But the real question is, if corruption continues and flourishes in spite of Note Ban – what was the point of imposing so much suffering on the false promise of fighting corruption?

How Narendra Modi changed the currency ban narrative

(Excerpt from a piece by Praveen Chakravarty, Firstpost, December 5, 2016)

The Prime Minister made six speeches across the country on the demonetisation policy between November 13 and November 27, including his radio address to the nation, Mann Ki Baat, according to data available on the Prime Minister’s personal website. The text of all the speeches are available on the website.

A data analysis of the speeches (after translation) reveals a shifting of the narrative of the demonetisation action and its objectives.

In his speech on November 8, 2016, when he announced the demonetisation policy, the Prime Minister used the phrase “black money” four times more than “fake/counterfeit currency”.

By November 27, he used the phrase “digital/cashless” thrice as much as “black money” with no mention of “fake currency”. Recall, there was zero mention of “digital/cashless” in the initial November 8 speech.