It should sound more pathetic and painful than curious that the fakes of the newly introduced Rs2,000 notes are getting circulated on a massive scale. The record haul by the Howrah police of over 57 lakh worth of these fakes this week exposed a big note racket now operating. This should not be considered as limited to Kolkata alone.
Orissa, too, has recently witnessed utilisation of such currency. Such rackets are operating nationwide from West Bengal, many of them centering around Malda district, where fakes reach from Bangladesh.
On one side, this is another proof that Prime Minister Narendra Damodardass Modi’s demonetisation decision has not served one major highly publicised purpose. On the other, the government will have to do a lot of explaining as to how fake new notes have found their way to Indian cities with rocket speed, and how external agencies were able to copy even the salient security features so fast and so very easily. To say the least, this is highly embarrassing.
The perception played up by Modi is that Indian currency is produced in bulk in presses in Pakistan under the direct supervision of the military intelligence, the ISI, does not seem valid anymore. If this is seen as part of the Pakistani army’s stated objective to bleed India in a thousand ways, then Modi’s demonetisation was considered the answer.
Large stocks of counterfeit Indian currency notes were coming into the country through various routes including the Nepal border for quite a few years. Such notes are claimed to have come in via sea also. Now it seems the focus for such operations has shifted to the Bangladesh border.
The laxity on the part of the Indian law enforcement agencies has been of great help to these gangs who operate with relative ease and impunity.
Some estimates say up to 20 per cent of the new notes in circulation are already fakes, wherever they might have originated. The ease of blaming Pakistan was supposedly done away with after demonetisation.
This was one of the reasons cited by PM Modi when he announced the demonetisation step wherein currencies of two top denominations had been junked. When it was all too clear that such mischief would continue, it is surprising that the Indian government went in for release of notes of higher value — of Rs2,000.
One possibility is that, this was a short-cut for Reserve Bank of India to reach some money to people’s hands fast as over 80 per cent of the Indian currency got sucked out in a single go — and without even basic preparations to replace old currency with new ones.
The scenario has not been normalised vis-a-vis remonetisation. Most ATMs are yet to function in a normal manner, and most of them are short of cash even today. Finance minister Arun Jaitley’s bluff that all’s well does not match with the situation on the ground.
No one has any idea for how long this crisis would get carried forward. The ineptness of those at the helm responsible for both demonetisation and remonetisation,
is shameful for a nation the size of India.
Their only moment of glory could come if Modi’s BJP trounces opponents in Uttar Pradesh Assembly election whose results are slated for announcement on 11 March 2017. If the results go positive, the BJP and Modi could feel that their desired wish of making the poor feel that Modi is working against the ‘rich’ would have paid off.
Used as an election ploy, this dangerous economic move could prove disastrous for all us Indians who may have to pay dearly for a long time to come.
This has turned out to be a tragedy of immense proportions, evident also by the fact that the nation’s growth rate has slowed down substantially — something that the government is trying to cover up with a jugglery of numbers.
The government is yet to clearly state how much of the scrapped notes had come back to the banks. Positives like much of the stocks of cash having been brought into the banking system are, by themselves, not sufficient.
With massive detection of fake notes of Rs2,000 denomination, the case is strengthening for the nation to go in for only small denomination notes and do away with the newly introduced top denomination notes.
Reliance on digital transactions is a good idea but we need to be realistic. It would take a long time for the nation to get adapted to such systems. Urgent remedial actions are called for to ensure that the curse of fake currency circulation is effectively controlled.
It is a pity that the government is still groping in the dark over this matter while it is solely focused on political rhetoric.
