My views on the Demonetization Scheme of PM Modi

The decision to demonetize Rs. 500 and 1000 currency notes by the govt. of India came as a sudden shock to the people of India. Despite the inconvenience caused, people are welcoming the decision. hon'ble PM has asked the people of India to have patience for the next 50 days so that he could resolve all the difficulties arisen out of the situation. But opportunists have started blaming the govt. from the day 2 by pointing out to the silly points which will not stand in the court of law. This post addresses some of those false allegations  and notions on the demonetization scheme. 

As per the World Bank estimates the size of black money in India is almost 25% of the GDP .e. Approx. Rs. 30 lakh crore. RBI estimated that around 50% of the total money circulated in cash in India is unaccounted i.e. approx. Rs. 7 lakh crore black money is in circulation as cash. It is a foolish argument that govt. has done nothing to curb the black money existing in other than cash such as Gold or Fixed Assets. Criticizing anyone is easy but providing alternate solutions is hard. If we look at all the possible solutions to curb the black money (See ‘Proposals to prevent Indian Black Money’ in the link- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_black_money), Mr. Modi has implemented most of them and this is yet another solution mentioned by experts which have multiple benefits such as, financing for illegal activities (Terrorism, Human Trafficking, and Naxalism etc) will be decreased, Generates awareness among the people to stop accumulating unaccounted cash in future. This will push people towards electronic money transfer which is anyway a good sign for the economy.

The claim that half of the people will get shield from this move is a farce argument. Due to large scale scams during the UPA rule, most of the bureaucrats were fearing to take bold decisions, as a result there is a Policy Paralysis and on the other hand Mr. Modi wants the government to be more active, decisive and responsive to fast track the reforms and hence he brought amendment to the ‘Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988’. This move is also based on the recommendation of a parliamentary committee, which had suggested to shield public servants by making it mandatory for probe agencies to take “previous approval” of the competent authority before conducting any probe against a public servant — from peon to secretary. However, such an approval will not be necessary for cases involving “arrest of a person on the spot on the charge of accepting or attempting to accept any undue advantage for himself/herself or for any other person”, the panel had said. Also, this amendment was in the discussion for more than a year and it has nothing to do with this Demonetization decision.

After this move, some people are donating their money to temples. There are two ways to do this, one way, donate to the charitable trust which manages the temple and another to drop their gifts in Hundis. Revenue secretary made it clear that they will not be monitoring the money dropped in Hundis but will monitor the donations to charitable trusts as they will maintain the donor’s details. Practically also it is impossible to trace people who drop gifts in Hundis.  There is no way people make their money into white through this channel.

For the last 60 yrs we have been criticizing our systems in INDIA for the corruption and now when someone has taken a bold step ahead, it is our responsibility to support this at least for the period of 50 days that the govt. has asked. Later if we really find any malign intentions then we may go to the court of law. If possible let us volunteer to help people by passing proper information. 

Wayanad:The world of ecstasy in the god's own country....

Our last trip during December 2012 to Araku valley in Vishakapatnam district of Andhra Pradesh was wonderful and joyful.  After the trip, we decided to have another such enthralling trip by the end of the year 2013. As the time arrived, one of my friends rang me on the Christmas morning and reminded me about our trip once again by saying that he has two more leaves and he doesn't want to waste them. As usual, I started discussing the same with my friends and we got involved in planning the trip.

Our group comprises me and four other friends. Except one remaining all are bachelors ready to get married soon. We know that this is going to be our last trip before getting married and hence each one of us wants to enjoy this trip to the core of the heart. So this time we wanted to choose a place, where we can stay in the middle of the jungle in a beautifully designed farmhouse, and where we can sit all night on a hilltop, in the warmth of a campfire, surrounded by darkness, eating hot chicken barbecue and cracking silly jokes.

Beautiful Nature at Wayanad

After 24 hrs of research we finalized Wayanad in Kerala, as our destination. As it was the peak season of Christmas and New Year, we struggled to find a stay in Wayanad and we were shocked to hear the rates for our dream stay i.e. Tree Top Residence and hence we avoided it completely. At last, we found a serviced villa far from the town of Mananthwady. We started our journey on a hired taxi from Hyderabad to Wayanad via Bangalore and Mysore. The entire night journey was quite interesting with funny moments, discussions, and debates over contemporary social and political issues, having tea at a roadside Dhaba for every now and then.

Day 1 of Trip:

Early in the morning, we stopped near the border check post of Karnataka, where the R.T.O officer took Rs. 1000 as border tax and has given a receipt for only Rs. 500 which we have realised only after some time, and soon we got involved in estimating his monthly illegal earnings. Since we woke up the entire night, we relaxed for some time at our friend's house in Bangalore and then we started again. The journey on the outer ring road from Electronic city to Mysore road was really smooth without much traffic.

R.T.O Check Post @ Karnataka Entrance 

Having realised that we cant reach the Muthanga wildlife sanctuary within time, we slowed down and halted for lunch at a Punjabi Dhaba near Mysore. Being Hyderabadi we never lose interest in biryani and as soon as we saw Chicken Biryani(CB) on the menu we ordered 3 CB for 5 people, as this is the usual practice in any hotel at Hyderabad. Later we were shocked to see the Mysore version of Chicken Biryani, it looks like lemon rice and the quantity was very minimal and hence we ended up ordering 3 more CB. Then I recalled what one of my friends used to say i.e. Never expect Hyderabadi Chicken Biryani elsewhere.

On the way from Mysore to Sultan Battery, we found that most of the people are involved in farming fruits and vegetables. When inquired we found that Kerala has very little land available for agriculture and horticulture and hence most of their food  supplies are supplied from Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.  Soon we entered into the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve in the Western Ghats. We were eagerly looking for animals on the two sides of the road and luckily we could able to spot a herd of Deer. As we crossed the forest, we ended up again at the R.T.O border check post of Kerala, with the earlier experience we kept Rs. 500 and wanted to fight with him if he asks extra, but to our surprise here he asked Rs. 100. We gave it happily and later to our dismay the receipt was for only Rs. 50. Here we drew a conclusion that irrespective of the state the percentage of the commission remains the same.

R.T.O Check Post @ Kerala Entrance

Here comes the most interesting moment of the day, as we were already late we canceled visiting places near Sultan Battery and started to Mananthwady, the place where we have our stay put up.  Since we were new to the place, obviously we engineers used our trusted travel guide "Google Maps"  to reach the destination. Having a strong faith in Google Maps we simply followed its instructions and only after 1 hour of travel we realised that we have lost and with all the struggles we could able to arrive at the Mananthwady Bus station at 9 PM. 

Everybody was hungry and tired with day-long journey and we were eagerly waiting to go and relax in the villa.  Here comes a man named 'Babu' who is a manager at the villa to guide us to the villa. Unfortunately, he only speaks Malayalam and none of us know Malayalam, at a moment when we were all hungry and impatient he was testing our limits. We picked our phones and started calling our Kerala friends to translate what we wanted to put forth. However at last we could able communicate with him using Trilingual formula i.e. Malayalam, Simple English, and Universal language (Sign Language). Now we realized the importance of the book "learn Malayalam in 30 days". The good thing is, he is very patient and trying his best to understand our language.

Wayanad Spice County: Where we stayed

One of my friends sat on the back of Babu's bike and Babu started guiding us to the villa. We started around 10 pm at the Mananthwady bus station towards the villa. It is a blacktop road, surrounded by Jungle, hardly anyone is there on the roads. Though we could able to spot some houses here and there, they are separated by almost half a Km and they look abandoned.  There are no street lights and slowly we took a turn to enter onto a Kutcha road, and suddenly we could not even spot Babu and my friend who is on the bike. For a moment we were afraid that we were trapped. When we went further ahead we could able to see a big villa situated on a small hilltop full of lights decorated for Christmas eve, waiting eagerly for our arrival. We relaxed and went into the house, we were thrilled to see the facilities, infrastructure, and architecture of the house. We forgot all our pains and relaxed. At around 11 pm we had the food that we have brought from a hotel at Manathawady bus station. After dinner, we happily slept dreaming of the next day ..........To Be Continued with Day 2......

The dynamics of promoting entrepreneurship among the rural poor

Before digging in to the subject I must say that this is my first blog and I am writing this to share some of my experiences and learning in the field. The views expressed here are my personal opinions drawn from my own observations. I am in the process of learning, and i am always open to questions pertaining to the ideas or views expressed in this blog.

This blog post is the first part of the series of posts I would like to write on ‘the dynamics of promoting entrepreneurship among the rural poor’. This part basically explains ‘the need for promoting entrepreneurship among the rural poor’.

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As most of us must be aware of the famous Chinese axiom ‘’Give a man a fish, and you have fed him once. Teach him how to fish and you have fed him for a lifetime”, to extend it further, ‘Teach him how to make a business out of the extra fish that he catches everyday and you have improved his standard of living’ (assuming that he uses his earnings for the right purpose). To put in simple words this art of generating wealth out of the existing opportunity using available resources is what we call as entrepreneurship.

What is entrepreneurship: defining entrepreneurship is not an easy task as there are numerous definitions provided by various scholars based on the different contexts. Hence to choose a definition appropriate to rural context, we need to think of entrepreneurial skills that will be needed to improve the quality of life of individuals and communities and to sustain a healthy economy and environment. Hence “Entrepreneurship is the process of creating value by pulling together a unique package of resources to exploit an opportunity.” 1 

The need for promoting entrepreneurship among rural poor:

Eradication of extreme poverty and hunger is one of the important millennium development goals. Countries all over the world are implementing several programs to achieve this and India with a vast BPL population has a long track of policies to combat extreme poverty and hunger. These policies over last 50 years have taken various shifts from providing direct food subsidies, providing rural employment opportunities to promoting rural entrepreneurship.

As mentioned in the Chinese poem charity has its limits i.e. providing food subsidies is only a temporary solution and it is not sustainable in the long run keeping in mind the alarming economic situation. Also for an average rural family the food subsidy is not sufficient and hence they need to struggle for the remaining food. Hence governments have moved a step ahead towards providing employment in the rural areas i.e. teaching fishing.

This policy of creating rural employment sponsored by the government came as a game changer and helped many people in earning their bread. But it has its limits i.e. it has only provided limited employment which is not sufficient for a family to live a decent life. Keeping in mind the ever growing population and dwindling public finance, this policy alone may not help in improving the standard of living of rural people. Hence governments have moved a step further towards promoting rural entrepreneurship.

Promotion of rural entrepreneurship generates local jobs and adds value to the rural economy by reducing the stress on the government sponsored employment. Sustainable entrepreneurial activities ensure regular employment to the people and hence facilitates in improving their standard of living. But the challenge lies in promoting entrepreneurship in rural areas.

To summarize, poverty is multi dimensional and hence need a multi pronged approach.  All the three government initiatives mentioned above have contributed to reduce economic poverty. Though one approach may be better than the other but in reality all the three approaches are necessary depending on the context and level of poverty of the individuals.