Has demonetisation increased hoarding?

 

Hoarders went into panic mode when the announcement was made but slowly they began finding ways around it. After all, only a seasoned black money hoarder knows his way around the market. In short, demonetisation has encouraged people to become smarter about illegal wealth. Here are the several ways in which Indian hoarders tackled demonetisation:
 

• Businessmen paid their employees their salaries months in advance and with old currency to escape detection. Some employees proved smarter and were even asking for commissions from their bosses to do the same.

 

• Hoarders bought gold using the demonetised currency despite there being a high commission on it.

 

• Being experts at jugaad Indian public has even resorted to making a business out of such people’s desperation and are acting as middlemen exchanging old currency for a premium and disposing them off as they find ways. People are paying a premium for collecting this hoarded money.

 

• Some of them convinced poor people, employees, family members, friends to deposit money into their bank accounts with the hope that once the crisis was over, they would get back the money. 

 

• There were others who very suspiciously turned to Gods and temples to dispose off their hoarded wealth.

 

• From booking first class AC tickets for long train journeys and then cancelling it. Wow! Genius!

 

• Using gullible people into giving them access to their Jan Dhan accounts wherein highly influential businessmen deposited their money in batches to withdraw at a later date

 

• How can we forget politicians? Any donations to political parties below ₹20,000 does not need any PAN or other documentation. One can even predate donation cheques and receipts to escape detection and change old currency to new.

 

• According a report in the Tribune India, hoarding of the new currency has become a major problem. Petrol pumps have become money exchangers. They are hoarding the new currency, exchanging it with old notes that they deposit at the end of the day in the bank. The new currency is being passed on at a premium. Now there you go.

 

 

Now with the ₹1000 and ₹500 notes slowly out of the system and there being a deficit of the new ₹2000 and ₹500 notes, a whole new chain has been started. Desperate attempts at printing counterfeit currency has already started, terrorists in Kashmir robbed banks, secured a lot of the new currency and were attempting to send it across the border for counterfeiting again. Within a week of the release of new notes, there were stories of people being duped with fake currency.

 

 

Do the people in the above photograph look like hoarders or ones with black money to hide? To quote Arvind Kerjriwal: “Who are standing in the long lines? Rickshaw pullers, traders, shopkeepers, housewives – who paid their taxes.”

 

 

The people involved in the above listed points are not seen lining up or struggling to make ends meet. The ones who were affected was that housewife who had stashed away savings for a rainy day for her family, the small trader who has no cash or resources to further his business. It has rather become a move where the common people feel criminalised for keeping money at home, for now trying to get it back and for now wondering how they will schedule a whole month of expenses. Going digital is a luxury only few can afford, by the time the ‘poor’ come on board the damage will be done.