MAD
TUGLAQIAN MEASURES
The chapter of Mohammed Bin Tuglaq in Indian
history, with his horrible measures of madness and cruelty, is a gory interval
in our long history, sometimes it seems almost incredible, but watching the mad
show going on in our country now in the name of ‘banning’ of big currency notes,
trumpeted as an indispensable measure for fighting corruption and ‘black money’,
nothing seems impossible/un-replicable in this country. Ever since the Mahaa Moorkh announced with a bang in
all pomp and show in the night of 8 November 2016 that all 500 and 1000 Rupee
Notes would not be legal tender but for a few exemptions till 30 December, that this was essential to curb, unearth and
eradicate black money, the whole country is in serpentine queues for all these five
weeks or more searching for paltry amounts of cash to pull on lives and in the
process several persons lost their lives even. In a country where more than 80%
of all financial transactions take place in cash, at least 20% have no bank
accounts at all, and where 86% of the cash-coins are but these big notes, could
any madder measure be conceived and sought to be implemented to destroy the
people and the economy altogether, one wonders. Leave all that talk of black
money, which could not be, in cash, more than 5-10% of the total cash in the
country, what about the loss of lakhs of crores to the economy – of incomes to
the people at large who in millions queue up before non-working ATMs and
ill-equipped banks for days together? What about the loss of precious lives day
in and day out of helpless persons, unable to withstand the rigors of standing?
Of shutting down of industries or forcible/invisible retrenchment of lakhs of
workers in not only unorganized sectors, of the woes and weal of crores of
farmers who cannot sell their produce at any affordable or even low rates due
to such cash crunch? Has any country in the world been able to even lessen, let
alone eradicate, black money by such an insane measure? To buttress their
indefensible measures the fraudsters spread all sorts of lies, including the
so-called demonetization of big currency notes in the US in 1969 – which
never occurred. Now they are even talking about a cashless society – a sure way
to totalitarianism. And we have been seeing new sorts of corruption and black
money emerging with the ruling party-wallahs preponderant in that line too, and
ministers and leaders of the ruling party – Jaitley, Gadkari and Gali Janardhan
Reddy et al - lolling in luxuries and spending hundreds of crores for marriages
etc. when people are dying for want of trifles of cash to buy medicines or food
even. In any other country, such a despicable government would have surely vanished
due to people’s wrath but here it still continues to run like a bull in the China Shop. §§§
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