Criticising Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “emotional” defence of demonetisation, the CPI on Wednesday demanded that the demonetised currency notes of Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 should be made acceptable by public utilities and called for strong action on real black money holders.
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But it has stunned hundreds of millions of poor and working-class Indians who live an nearly entirely cash-based existence, paying in bills for everything from rent to groceries to cellphone credit.
A week ago, India announced that it was withdrawing 500 and 1,000 rupee notes as legal tender to fight corruption and tax evasion.
Answer: NRIs would personally need to exchange the notes in India or authorise someone to do it for them.
The middle class always suffers the worst. Sharma, who was present in the RBI meeting to create a task force to improve uptime of ATMs, said that banks have already made the required changes in the software switch so that ATMs can dispense the new higher denomination notes.
“I have been in Goa since Diwali and took out 30,000 rupees (£356) – in three sets of 10,000 rupees (£118) ATM transactions – which is the maximum allowed for foreign debit cards before the notes were declared invalid”.
Let me now come to the possibility that whenever a person, even in the unorganized sector, obtains either “cash” or a cheque, such a person simply deposits it with a bank, and uses this claim upon the bank to make payments or carry out transactions.
Travelex Ltd, which operates more than 200 currency exchange stores in the U.S., said it is unable to accept the 500 and 1,000 rupee bills from customers because it can not repatriate the cash in bulk under India’s current rules, said Lucie Smith, a spokeswoman for the London-based company.
The first people showed up at the bank long before dawn, forming a line in the cold and the smog and silently waiting for the chance to withdraw their own money. The cash withdrawal limit at automated teller machines is 2,500 rupees a day. In an attempt to carry out the banking process in an orderly fashion in what has become a chaotic environment, the RBI has laid out a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for banks and post offices which involves use of indelible ink on the citizen’s fingers. One particularly extravagant five-day affair in southern India this week, the wedding of a mining tycoon’s daughter in Bangalore, reportedly cost about $75 million – including over 3,000 bouncers and samba dancers flown in from Brazil.
Indian farmer Zakir Khan should be sowing his winter crops now.
“Agriculture is an important component of our society”, he said.
“Sadly the waiters do not get a tip from me as those small notes are so precious, but I have promised them a big tip when I manage to finally exchange some of my money”. We are ready to cater to all customers, but where is the cash? Now this has made it seemingly hard, or almost impossible to exchange the old notes with the new ones within a day or two.
Adding to the chaos were rumors the government was planning to announce further measures, however India’s state-run Press Information Bureau said talk of plans to demonetize smaller notes was a myth. It’s not like Europe or the USA where everyone is running around with a credit card. As both the schemes were voluntary, the UPA and NDA governments were still unable to trace the big fish.
Larger amounts of demonetized bills can be deposited in saving accounts before the end of the year.
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“This is not black money – it’s their hard-earned money, put aside with a great deal of sacrifice”.
