Ignoring demonetisation's impact on farmers will see rural India burn

The government is actively contributing in pushing the farming, rural population further into the grave with a romaniticised ideal called demonetisation, which people want to defend at any cost. As many of us invoke the soldier's sacrifice to defend the decision, here is something Ramchandra Guha said at a recent literary fest I attended:

"If we really love our soldiers, we have to find ways to diminish the conflict, because they are the one who pay the price of conflict. If we are finding reasons to continue the conflict, we don't really care about them, but using them for our political, personal nationalist-looking gains. Also, invoking nationalism in a political debate is the biggest disrespect on can do to the Army."

So let's not bring the Army into the picture at all.

Talking of ground realities, this was a year of excess rainfall for most of rural India, leading to the destruction of crops. Some points we must consider when we think of rural India, that is Bharat, and not the India we live in:

1. Farmers are already cornered and selling their products at whatever cost the dealers demand, because of the loss due to heavy rains - so most of them won't even get money amounting to their expenditure.

2. The transactions through cheques and card are negligible in rural India. At every step, you need cash - whether it is buying groceries, vegetables, medicines or drinking tea. Medical shops have stopped taking old notes in spite of the government's orders.

3. The non-availability of farm labour has been hit badly by the lack of cash and change, as there is no money to pay them. In the absence of money in the market, they have no money in return. The whole market is down, almost shut, may it be small businesses, agricultural activities, labour-extensive work or small and medium scale industries.

4. All the farmers and most of the other businesses in villages have their accounts in the local, co-operative and district banks and not private banks, whose operations have been seized. The small non-banking financial corporations, or "patsansthas", which were legally founded had most of the people's money and are now non-operational.

5. There are almost 20,000 patsansthas and their 75,000 branches in Maharashtra alone, who take care of day-to-day financial activities of Bharat, which are completely defunct.

6. More than 70,00,000 people have their accounts in the district banks, where they used to get their money from government schemes, money for agricultural activities through various government schemes, which have seized functioning.

7. A total of around two crore of rural Bharat's population does its banking thorough these non-nationalised and non-private banks, which have no right to exchange the notes, nor do they have any money in them, as the government cannot supply cash.

8. So the logical answer of "one should have a bank account" fails to solve the problem of Bharat's population.

9. When the cash in hand is rendered just paper and the penetration of financial institutions is poor, the ones who survive "hand to mouth" should kill himself for the "greater good".

What we have dubbed as a great policy in the name of wiping out black money is nothing but a bunch of blunders:

- Only 8 per cent of the black money is stored in cash, says RBI.

- The government of India forgot to recalibrate the ATM machines across the country to the new sizes of notes - that's how brilliant this policy is.

- The amount recovered is around 15 trillion and the amount printed is about three trillion - that is 20 per cent of what is taken in. The remaining 80 per cent don't need the money.

- Almost 82 per cent of the cash in circulation is deposited in banks as of today and December has just started. So where is the black money?

- Those talking about the "implementation" going wrong, but the policy being sound, forget implementation is an integral part of policy, not independent of it - so the policy is flawed.

- All those waiting and wanting others to wait for the policy to work because Modi has so many steps to tackle this, remember the election speeches and, above that, the promise that all the black money is in Swiss and foreign bank accounts and will get it back. Where is it?

- The PM crying and declaring to citizens that people would not let him live is nothing but a desperate move to appeal to people's emotions and seek support for his flawed stunts.

This is just a smokescreen to up his party's political game, and even if it was a great step, at what cost - of people's lives?

The government is supposed to take care of the "last man", that is the basis for anything and everything the government decides, designs and thinks. This decision has ensured the small scale, informal, daily wage, agrarian economy comes to a standstill. But we are the pioneers and flagbearers of #DigitalPayment #DigitalIndia, let those in Bharat suffer and die.

A simple economic logic: you won't ban 1000-rupee notes and introduce a 2,000-rupee note (that too with printing errors) if you are serious about fighting corruption and stashing black money. The government just doubled the black money holders' capacity with half the space - convenient, isn't it?

We have become this urban brand, as everything today translates to a PR exercise. Who will support flawed, half-hearted and politically motivated policies because this is a new form of nationalism and national duty.

Opposing the government - earlier seen as an act of defiance has transitioned to dissent and now an act of treason. If not that, then opposing wrongdoings or policies is somehow seen as support for other political parties, Naxalites, terrorists or even Pakistan.

In our chest-thumping patriotism, what we are forgetting is the farmer, the last mile. We are choosing to ignore it cautiously, overlook the agony and pain of those suffering the most, brushing down the facts on ground and invoking soldiers when people die to justify everyday casualties.

We, in India, are ready to support the romanticised ideal of demonetisation and its abstract ability to curb black money. But we have no idea how and if it will ever achieve that, but we chose to ignore what is really happening on the ground. This, along with other trends, shows that we are immune to the sufferings of those beyond our urban worldview. This trend, ideology and attitude will see the end of the rural population - and slowly but surely and specifically the farmers of Bharat.

The degeneration of our conscience and our empathy to support a policy like demonetisation will end up killing our own people.