Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi held talks with senior ministers till the early hours of Monday morning to review demonetization and its impact.
The meeting came amid chaos across the country over limited cash availability after 1,000 rupee and 500 rupee notes were taken out of circulation.
The meeting at Modi’s residence was attended by Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, Information and Broadcasting Minister Venkaiah Naidu and top officials of the finance ministry.
“The Reserve Bank of India has said there is enough cash available in the system,” economic affairs secretary Shaktikanta Das said after the meeting.
Nevertheless, public anger remained, along with the long queues in front of banks and at ATMs as millions clamored for new bank notes.
“What’s the use of issuing the new 2,000 rupee notes? The government should have just issued the new 500 rupee notes instead to help customers buying commodities,” said E.B.G. Menon, a retired state government official.
“An unnecessary panic has been created among the public as they rushed to banks for immediate of exchange or to deposit old notes. This could have been avoided since the government had given them time until December 30 2016,” said K. Jayaraj, said a retired bank official.
“Micro ATMs will be deployed in a large number of areas to dispense cash against debit and credit cards,” Das said, adding that there would be special queues for disabled and senior citizens.
Indian banks received 3 trillion rupees of 500 rupee and 1,000 rupee notes over the last four days, the Finance Ministry said.
Unaccounted wealth
Meanwhile, the government relaxed cash withdrawal limits including removing a per-day cap of 10,000 rupees, increasing the weekly limit to 24,000 rupees from 20,000 and allowed exchange of bills over the counter at banks to reach 4,500 rupees instead of 4,000.
The move to demonetize the large bills is designed to bring billions of dollars’ worth of cash in unaccounted wealth into the mainstream economy, as well as dent the finances of Islamist militants who target India and are suspected of using fake 500 rupee notes to fund operations.
The banned rupee notes made up more than 80% of the currency in circulation, leaving millions without cash and threatening to bring much of the cash-driven economy to a halt.
This shortsighted policy does not stop the super crooks to cover their ill gotten money to other currencies. Wonder if this is another of Modi’s showmanship for domestic audients?
Even the most die hard Indian patriot his heart will sink when he looks at those long ques & the elderly,street hawkers going without business…..the only bright thing here is the trust economy has increased with credit market growing in grocery shops,tea shops,street food market…….but i think Modi will lose the election as the foreign NGOs,media & the communist congress party will cash out from this.
To know how much black money was there in India ….in 1978 the government of India collected 100MM tonne of Gold as taxes in 2016 their tax collection was 150MM tonne of Gold while a plot of land which costed 150 gramme of gold now costs 3000 kg of gold…..while taxes were not growing despite 15 times growth in cost of land.
Unseemly queues!