DEMONETISATION – WHY THE PESSIMISM?

I just had this chat/argument/advice session with the owner of the shop from where I buy dry fruits. I always pay him in cash. I called him to tell him that when the goods are delivered home I will be paying in cheque. He said no Madam, we never accept cheques. I said come on, there is shortage of cash you know, you need to change your systems and then I took the name of our Prime Minister on how he is working hard to clean up our economy. He was furious. He said let Modiji do whatever he wants, why should we suffer. I questioned him suffer? Can you not bear some pain for long term gain? And then I asked him what is the big pain for you to take a cheque. He said Madam Modi thinks he can change and eliminate black money but people must change. I got angry. I told him you mean to say we should not do anything because people will not change. I said a drop in the ocean makes all that difference. He tells me but those people will take all the water from the ocean and make it dry!! I told him don’t be so pessimistic. Who is PM Modi doing all this for, for us, for your children I told him. But he refused to be taken by all this upright talk. He said Madam why should we suffer. My goods are lying unsold. We are not getting credit from our suppliers. And then he said I have 3 cheques with me from customers that have bounced. If you are ready to honour them, I will continue to take cheques. I asked him are these your frequent customers. He said yes and they are from all these towers (meaning rich people). He told me you may be honest but how can I take a cheque when my experience has been bad. Well he did shut my mouth up. I realised he had a point, PEOPLE NEED TO CHANGE AND THAT’S WHERE ALL THE ROADBLOCKS COME FROM. We all need to have cooperated to make this work. But we did not. We only raised or pointed our fingers at all that was wrong.

When a journalist told me a few years back that fake or counterfeit money is coming in trucks from the borders, I was shocked as I had heard it for the first time, but many tell me it is happening for years. This can have so many repercussions. Read this article which says that troubles in J&K have stopped suddenly because of demonetisation http://postcard.news/violence-jammu-kashmir-suddenly-stopped/. But when fake money was filtering in, was it headline news in any paper or did I miss it? Did these very same critics point out why the government is not doing anything about it? Was there much noise made? Now the critics are fast at giving reasons why demonetisation is not the solution.

Nevertheless it is one big step in the right direction. Involuntary disclosure is not voluntary and so it is going to create hardships. I thus cannot accept criticisms against demonetisation. I know that it is easy for me to say this with a credit and debit card in my hand and I am no trader or farmer. But we need to take these hard steps. The government has only to lose with this announcement. It may just lose votes. So here is one step not done for the vote bank but again we are up and ready to criticize. What is the intention? The intention is good. The intention is honest. To clean our system of black money. Is this the best route critics ask? Why make people suffer critics ask? There are many other ways critics say. But the fact is that for years we really did not do anything.

Yes its true that a big fault lies with the government on the preparedness of the scheme. They should have thought it through, especially making ATMs ready to withdraw new cash (but that would have taken some time and between that the danger was of the news being leaked). I may digress here but I suggest to the government that be it demonetisation or be it Swachh Bharat or even Health information like prevention of the spread of Tuberculosis, government needs to build an added machinery where it has government appointed people going to the poor, rather than the poor seeking the government in long queues. We did have some such system in the past. Where government people visit the slums, the rural areas and educate the poor. Here in the case of demonetisation too, the government could have set up a bank extension scheme (or for that matter even employed bank correspondents) at various slums, rural locations and set up distribution systems.

The people do understand what is good and bad for them. Maids, drivers in my locality never complained. They did say what a big problem it is but they managed. That’s the spirit they have. They are eager to be a part of the clean system and be a part of developing India. Look how they adapted to mobile phones. How they have gone on to open bank accounts. How they yearn that their children have ENGLISH education despite the big donations schools ask even them! (well hopefully demonetisation does address that issue). They would be even better off if the government goes to them. The Prime Minister’s Mann ki baat initiative is a good communication system but the mass may not have the infrastructure or the time to listen to it.

Well white is the colour in fashion. USA voted for white people (not a good thing), we vote for white money (a very good thing).

MUMBAI FILM FESTIVAL (MAMI)

The Mumbai Film Festival (MAMI) held during October of this year was my first at a film festival.  Movies at film festivals portray life and its emotions in a very raw form, missing in movies with a commercial twist.

The first movie I saw at the festival was APPRENTICE, the story of a brother and a sister dealing with the hanging of their father for a murder he committed. Each and every scene and dialogue sets a chain of thoughts of life and its circumstances. The son deals with his father’s death by working at the same prison his father was hanged. He finally becomes the apprentice to the chief executioner of the prison, the very man who executed his father. The sister finds escape in a man she does not love but wants to marry and run away to a place nobody knows her. The sister asks her brother one day "did you tell at the prison whose son you are" and he responds with a question "did you tell your boyfriend who your father was". Deep emotions that show each is questioning the escape path the other has taken for a crime they did not commit but for which they will be executed their whole lives. It is then for the first time I saw a movie like a painting. It for you to decide how you look at the painting. So many untold colours within the main picture.

Another such movie was RED TURTLE. It is a simple animation story of a man swept away to a tropical island. As he attempts to cross the sea, he is disrupted by a Red Turtle twice. The Turtle brings down his makeshift boat. When he finds out that it is the Red Turtle that is toppling his moves, he beats her with a stick. And then regrets and nurtures her back to life. The Turtle takes the form of a woman. He almost makes his third attempt to cross the sea but the woman lures him back to the lonely Tropical Island. He then stays on. All through the movie, one gets to see nature in its most beautiful form- the rains, the sky, the birds, the mountains and I almost wish I was lost in an island so beautiful. The couple give birth to a son. One day Tsunami strikes. Post that the teenage son decides to leave the island and go on his own. He leaves behind beautiful nature, beautiful parents, perhaps to go to a city. The film finally ends with the man becoming old and dying and the woman goes back to her home and her identity – The Turtle and the sea. The filmmaker says he got the idea of featuring a Turtle who changes to a human, when he would see Turtles making a difficult attempt to come to the beach, digging, laying eggs, filling the pits, almost like humans and then going back to infinity – to the sea. Here again so many philosophies of life to think upon.

The film BACALAUREAT or Graduation was not on many recommended list of movies to see but worth the watch. In these days of big money and corruption scandals, it is quite surprising to see a movie set around the dishonesty in trying to rig exam paper marks and its repercussions. The father, a doctor, wants his daughter to get out of the small Romanian town, which has a large crime rate and there is not much development. He wants her to do her graduation at a University in London. For that she has to get high scores. She is a stellar student but just a day before the exams, there is an attempt to rape her. That turns everyone’s life upside down. The father is known in his field to be a very reputed and honest doctor. He against his own wish and the wish of his family meets the principal of his daughter’s school to request him to rig the marks if she is unable to answer her papers well. The principal, again a very honest principal, is forced to oblige. This because he gets a call from a notorious politician who helped him once when he was in need and this politician wants to oblige with the father doctor who is to do a major operation on him. The police come to question the politician at the hospital for some money deals and they tell the doctor they have records of his conversation with the politician about rigging the exam papers. Life is dictated by our circumstances and we don’t realise a small wrong step may lead to a big error and crime.

The movie AQUARIUS, tells you that real estate mafia is existing all over the world and not only in your country. The movie is about this old woman who refuses to sell her beautiful beach home where she has lived for many years. A very interesting dialogue in the movie is when she tells her children “ Do you know how difficult it is to live with the fact that you are not crazy but the world calls you crazy”. The building is empty as all the other residents have been lured by the real estate agent. Her children tell her to give up, one obvious reason is for the money but more for her security. She meets with a lot of resistance and opposition from everyone. That includes her neighbour who she knew as a kid and now a man. He calls her selfish and tells her she is not thinking of others who have vacated the building a long time back. It so well depicts the life situation that when you are alone in prevailing on what is right, it is hard to keep going. Most of the times we give up wondering whether it is worth it at all. The movie does have a lot of sex thrown in which is out of place at times. The movie ends with a shocking scene showing the extent to which real estate developers can go to. Few common methods are organising late night parties and creating noise and commotion to disturb her but most shocking is when they put hordes of termites in the flat above to make the structure weak. An interesting character shown is that of this young grandson of the founder of the real estate company. He has just come back with a business degree and this is his first project. He will do anything to make it a success for him. He is shown as suave, well-dressed with a pleasing personality and a smiling face which the old lady remarks is so fake. He may have a business degree but he has lost all emotions. The old lady remarks how uneducated common people have much more human compassion.

The movie NERUDA based on Chilean poet Pablo Neruda not only gives you his beautiful poetry but gave me one simple message – either have Poetry or humour in life or humour in poetry or poetic humour that will beautify and lighten, not only you, but even the enemies chasing you in life.

AFTER THE STORM is again a movie depicting so many life emotions. It is about a man who is a writer by heart but earns his money working as a detective. It interestingly depicts the role of money in the life of writers. He resorts to gambling to make his two ends meet but is not always lucky. Financial problems and gambling leads to his divorce and his wife takes custody of their son. The movie starts with scenes showing his mother, sister and him talking of their father who too was a writer and resorted to gambling and created hardships in their life. There are dialogues where the mother says to her son how relieved she is now that her husband has died and tells him she has thrown away all of his things. Soon the son realises he too is like his father who was misunderstood. His mother loved her husband and is merely trying to act as if she does not in front of her children. The movie also beautifully depicts the problems of old people living alone and the mother son relationship. The mother is saddened about her son’s divorce. She knows that he loves his wife and the wife too loves him but cannot face up to the hardships. Her grandson comes often to meet her and likes her. One day her son and grandson visit her. Later in the evening the wife comes to collect her son. There is a strong storm outside and it is advised to stay indoors. The mother tells all of them to stay the night as it is risky to travel. She hopes this may bring them back together. The night does bring all of them closer but yet love alone cannot keep the home fires burning.

All in all fantastic movies from across the world which brought out human life situations, that are universal, whichever country, whichever religion, whichever culture you may come from.