Indians are nothing if not ingenious. Trust them to turn adversity into a business opportunity. One just has to look at the innovative ways some people have devised to work around the ban on Rs 500 & 1000 notes that came as a bolt from the blue for the nation on November 8 evening.
Barely had the Prime Minister finished his bilingual address to the nation when the rich made a beeline for the nearest jewellery shop to turn their soon-to-be-raddi high denomination currency notes into gold. Top notch jewelers in Bhubaneswar –as in other cities – threw security concerns to the wind and kept their shops open well past midnight in a desperate attempt to cash in on this ‘distress purchase’ of the precious yellow metal and earn a fast buck in the process before the midnight deadline expired. A friend from Ahmedabad called the next morning to inform me that one of his acquaintances purchased gold worth – hold your breath - Rs 3 crores at a premium of Rs 1, 000 for every 10 grams!
But then buying gold was a no-brainer in a country as obsessed with the yellow metal as India. Reports of more innovative ways of beating the currency ban came trickling in the same morning. One of them talked of how people were booking high-value AC tickets – even if wait listed - on long-distance trains, hoping to cancel them before the journey and thus convert their Rs 500, 1000 notes into legit money. Those with larger wads of these currencies went ‘aerial’, booking tickets on sundry airlines for journeys they had no intention to undertake. But alas! The heartless government played spoilsport barring the bookings of waitlisted railway tickets for journeys commencing after November 12 and dropping a bomb shell by announcing that there would be no refunds on cancellation of confirmed air tickets!
With such measures backfiring, the situation called for a hare-brained idea. And sure enough, our desi financial wizards, who certainly can teach a thing or two to our wise-heads in the RBI and Narendra Modi’s crack financial team about the money market, came up with one: putting in place an impromptu system where a suddenly useless Rs 1000 bill could be exchanged for anything between Rs 600-900 depending on the ‘going rate’ at the particular place. All of a sudden, phones began ringing across the country with people ‘burdened’ with hoards of cash remembering their long-lost friends and politely asking for permission to deposit a lakh or two into the latter’s account. [My daughter received one such call from her friend from college days, who had never bothered to keep in touch all these years, right in front of me!] Social media, easily the most definitive barometer of the latest trends, picked up on this phenomenon with a telling joke; “The latest threat: if you don’t do as I say, I would deposit Rs 5 lakh in your account!”
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Television channels did a ‘sting’ of sorts showing illiterate slum women standing in queues, Aadhar/ Voter identity card and Rs 500/1000 notes in hand, for hours in front of bank branches in Bhubaneswar to exchange them for legit cash in the shape of currency notes of Rs 2, 000 or Rs 100 denominations. One of them didn’t even know how much cash she wanted to exchange or the type of I-card she held. When asked by the reporter when he could come for a chat for exchange of a few lakhs, an elderly woman from the Pathara Bandha slum answered rather innocently; “Come in the morning or evening - in fact, any time you want.” These women (and of course men too), who would otherwise sit idle at home or earn a maximum of Rs 200 for putting in a day’s hard labour, now have an opportunity to earn twice as much for working a quarter of what they would otherwise do. The arrangement suits everyone concerned just fine. While announcing the ban on the notes, Prime Minister Narendra Modi couldn’t have imagined in his wildest dreams that his move would provide employment to so many!
If you are under the impression that only the city clickers have the brains to turn this calamity of sorts into an income generation opportunity, think again. Touts turned entrepreneurs were seen doing brisk business exchanging Rs 500 notes for four Rs 100 notes – earning a neat Rs 100 (or 20%) profit in the process – at Lamtaput haat in tribal dominated Koraput district of all places!
One could go on and on listing out the innovative ways people have found to make light of the currency ban and – what is more – earn a few bucks in the process too. But the idea was not to prepare a laundry list of such innovations, but to take a bow to the Indian genius for making the best of the worst possible circumstances. Hats off to Indian ingenuity!!!