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This Twitter thread highlights how demonetisation has thrown lives apart in small towns

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Pathikrit Sanyal
Pathikrit SanyalNov 11, 2016 | 19:16

This Twitter thread highlights how demonetisation has thrown lives apart in small towns

Yes. Prime Minister Narendra Modi may have won himself enough mileage to get re-elected in the next Lok Sabha elections with this strategically-timed attack on black money. Demonetisation (a misnomer really, considering no currency is going out of commission in the long run), has been a "game-changer".

While a lot of people are cheering the move and calling it genius, there are some who are raising the tough questions that politicians and the general privileged middle classes/upper middle classes are turning a deaf ear to. Did Modi just completely ignore just how much harm, a couple of days without functioning banks and ATMs and two major currency denominations, can cause to the poor?

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Class and caste privileges, of course, have blinded generations after generations in this country and this is hardly surprising. The "greater good" argument is only made by those for whom this exercise is a minor inconvenience. One has to take off their rose-tinted glasses to notice that having less cash in your wallet, for a “couple of days”, does not mean less coffee from Starbucks or taking an auto rather than an Ola. For a huge section of our society, whose daily wages mean everything to them, who save up tiny amounts of money for years and years, when you ban the use of Rs 500 or Rs 1,000, you pretty much kick them in the gut, face and the groin at the same time.

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From sex workers, to domestic abuse survivors, a lot of people lives were disrupted by Modi Ji’s surgical strike on black money. [Photo: Indiatoday.in]

A story about such an incident came to the notice of people, in the form of a Twitter thread. Yes. Twitter is hardly the place for sensible discourse, but this wasn’t discourse. This was just a sad tale being narrated, 140 characters at a time.

Tejaswini Joshi told the story of her sister, who lives in Satara, Maharashtra. A tier-3 town agricultural town, Satara’s population of 5 lakhs was badly wounded with the demonetsation move.

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It’s really easy for nationalist Modi fanboys to troll questioners and provide excuses - like “why didn’t they get their Aadhar Cards made when the government was launching registration drives?”; or, “why can’t they get their bank accounts opened, it’s so damn simple?” - to forget that neither are a majority of people educated or informed enough to do that, and nor do they often have the luxury to make a choice of that kind.

It is this arrogant privilege and blind hatred for anyone who questions the government’s initiatives that prevents them from seeing that intersectional oppression has prevented several strata of the society to make choices as “simple” as these.

From sex workers, to domestic abuse survivors, to runaway children, there are a lot of people whose lives were disrupted by Modi ji’s "surgical strike on black money". Those who were supposed to be actually affected by this attack, seemed to be conveniently informed about this well in advance. Whether it was through backchannels, or just an ability to connect financial dots, a lot of powerful idividuals were able to dispose off their incriminatory black money before Modi launched his attack. Isn't that beautiful?

Yeah. It is for the greater good. But you only get to say that when you understand what one has to pay for this supposed greater good.

Also read - New Rs 500/2,000 notes, how to spot real from fake

Last updated: November 11, 2016 | 19:17
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