Why continue restrictions on withdrawing money: Chidambaram
Congress leader and former Finance Minister P Chidambaram on Saturday targeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi and asked the Centre why restrictions…
The unusual is a critical element of the news”. It is a pathetic reflection on the functioning of the present government that a month after its demonetisation adventure, the agonies of the common folk have now become so routine that long queues at banks/ATMs have become so normal” that they no longer attract the full glare of the media — after all how many horror-stories with the same underlying theme can reporters narrate, and the theory that one picture tells a thousand words” loses relevance when the camera is constrained to click” the same photograph every day. Yet make no mistake about it, fewer column centimetres and less exposure on prime-time television is a poor yardstick of the continued hardships people suffer. Only those who constitute an insensitive and arrogant government would comfort themselves into believing that the crisis has eased.
More likely it is the traditional resilience of the Indian people to cope with state-inflicted agony, an indication of resigned helplessness really, that has pushed the woes of demonetisation to the inside pages”. Yet careful perusal of those pages will confirm that every day a new dimension of the cash-crunch manifests itself — complaints from the diplomatic community, non-participation of leading players in a major tennis tournament, fewer footfalls at the iconic Taj Mahal, etc. All these have taken the place of people dying in queues, manual workers returning to their villages because there are no jobs in the city. Yet there is something socialistic” to the dirge: operators of helicopters and small aircraft lament fewer bookings even though elections are in the offing, just as the man running his small cargo-transporter finds himself out of business
as economic activity remains dislocated. The Prime Minister, finance minister, other ministers and senior officials — including those in the Reserve Bank — have given a shameless new dimension to the term turning a Nelson's eye”. Worse, they refuse to accept reality and put a dubious spin” to the pain the burra-sahibs seldom experience.
Tragically, the Opposition parties have failed to project the pain powerfully enough to pressure the authorities into more than token remedial measures. Petty one-upmanship has fractured Opposition unity, and some parties have sensed that as they run out of ammunition it is pragmatic — not principled — to see merit in demonetisation.
Even the self-declared spearhead has attempted to garner favour by diverting attention to imaginary threats, both in the air and on the road. Disrupting Parliament by insisting on only discussions in a specific format is evidence of their admitting to fighting a losing battle. And, as is the norm, it is the simple citizen who actually loses out after a month of unparalleled hardship.
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