2016

That’s my place, Sir.
[Newly fashioned. I’m overwhelmed!]
There
In the long, weary queues
Waiting patiently
On aching, creaking feet
Moving inch by painful inch
For a blushing, pink piece of paper
[that can’t buy me a day’s vegetable].
I’ve been made to line up all my life.
Before the factories,
before being admitted for the day’s work.
Before hospitals,
getting sick on feet to cure sickness.
Before ration shops for a pint of kerosene.
That’s my place, (…)

IMPRESSIONS
Not enough weeks have passed for us to say that the currency earthquake is over. Aftershocks are more severe than expected, with people waiting in day-long queues, and often failing to withdraw their own money. However, enough time has lapsed for us to look at the overall picture and ask a few basic questions: What is it all about? How did we come to this pass? Will all this lead to the fair and equitable life we deserve?
Only some answers are clear. Basically, this is all (…)

by Anandi Sharan
For the life of me I cannot understand the reasoning behind demonetisation. I think the hidden underlying motivation is that the only people India’s politicians are willing to attack are the poorest. Hindutva fascism is the system of turning the 90 per cent into miserable wrecks through demonetisation in order that the one per cent super rich and the nine per cent, who use their services and are employed by them, may continue their upper-caste ways and persecute religious (…)

by Aurobindo Ghose
On November 8, 2016 at 8 pm, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in an apparently live televised address to a shocked and surprised nation, announced that currency notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 denominations would cease to be legal tender from that midnight.
However, such notes could be exchanged on the basis of Aadhar cards, or deposited by their holders in their bank or post office accounts from November 10 to December 30.
Referring to ‘black money’ as the wad of big (…)

by Diptendra Raychaudhuri
Winter has set in. A winter at the time of demonetisation is expected to be severe, parti-cularly when the battle-lines have already been drawn and demarcated clearly.
Now, if it is a battle—ostensibly waged by the PM to hurt black money that has severely dented our confidence in politicians and the system (and also eroded our faith in the eternal ethical value of honesty and integrity)—there should be clear winners and losers. But, the government has not (…)

by Ram Puniyani
The month-old gamble of Narendra Modi (November 8, 2016) has put the whole country in an unprecedented chaos. The demonetisation of 86.4 per cent of the circulating currency in the form of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes has put into jeopardy the life of major sections of society. Nearly seventy people (now the figure has crossed 100) have died in the queues to withdraw the money from banks/ATMs. The daily-wage workers have to lose their daily earnings to withdraw the cash, many (…)

by Joseph D’souza
On the day the US elected Donald Trump as its President, Prime Minister Modi of India announced a sudden midnight decision to demonetise 86 per cent of India’s cash economy. His intention was to attack India’s “black” economy—fuelled by unaccounted for cash or “black money”—by forcing those who participate in illegal activities like tax evasion to disclose their finances.
While most Indians, including myself, support this idea, the experience of the last two weeks is (…)

Make us landless Make us homeless Make us forestless Make us cashless Make us foodless Make us waterless Make us airless But you cannot make us faithless When the day of reckoning comes We shall make you powerless Please keep time Time is remorseless Time will turn! Time will turn!
— Suhas Borker
December 15, 2016
[Suhas Borker is an independent documentary film-maker and Editor, CFTV NEWS. He is also Convener of the Working Group on Alternative Strategies (WGRAS). He can be contacted (…)

MUSINGS
I have just switched off the television. Couldn’t view any further, depressing and hitting news—reports of the hapless getting brutally lathi-charged when they were standing in long queues to withdraw their own money, or a young mother of four little children throwing kerosene on herself because the five hundred rupee notes in her clasp had been rendered ‘useless’ to buy even the basics for her brood, or an elderly man committing suicide in utter insecurity after his rupees were (…)

Home Minister Rajnath Singh has said that Pakistan is again trying to divide India on the basis of religion. He conveniently forgets history. Pakistan was a consequence, not the cause. The society was divided and both Hindus and Muslims had reached a point of no return. Consequently, they had marshalled themselves in two separate camps with little contacts with each other.
True, the Muslim League under the leadership of Mohammad Ali Jinnah wanted a separate sovereign Muslim state, but (…)