Currency Demonetisation and Future course of Indian Economy

Suraj · Post by **Suraj** » 18 Nov 2016 02:09

RajeshG wrote:
Suraj wrote:This is an enforcement issue.
Its still a problem that needs to be fixed. Fixed in a politically and economically acceptable way.

Do your bit and be one more person tweeting the details from that article to PMO then.

RajeshG · Post by **RajeshG** » 18 Nov 2016 02:23

although i have already stated this, there seems to be a slight disconnect between what people are saying in this thread and what happens in reality.

people here take BM as evil and almost everybody who has 'black' money as kaffir.

in real world BM isnt quiet black - but there are shades of grey. even people with 'black' money have 'morals'. a baniya running a business for eg takes buying indira-vikas-patra or something similar to save taxes as the same thing as not reporting certain amount of his revenues. if he can "set" it ofcourse. If there arent those easily and cheaply available then he probably wont do it.

there are practical implications. for eg there are many people here who claim to be making their payments for their house help using electronic xfer or check. if for eg the same thing was incentivised by govt saying you can claim salaries paid to house-help etc as expenses then i am sure the baniya will become very interested and that much money will become more accountable. for govt it generates employment anyway - you want more of it anyway - so it does make sense to incentivise it ? i also suspect a huge amount of 'black' money is because of this "setting". people here mix it with the babu who has 24 lacs pa salary but has 1000 cr worth of land/gold but i suspect thats not a big %age or atleast thats alienating a big %age of population.

saip · Post by **saip** » 18 Nov 2016 02:33

You can always rationalize everything including black money and even murder. But how come I never had even a rupee of unreported income even though I worked in the Government and then in a Company and then ran a business. Never took a bribe and never gave a bribe.

prahaar · Post by **prahaar** » 18 Nov 2016 02:34

Bibek Debroy talks like a professor with the students in the TV program. Although that may be ok as a professor, it is not par for the course as a public servant. One interesting tidbit from the above video is that account-less people are more in urban areas than in rural areas (post-PMJDY).

saip · Post by **saip** » 18 Nov 2016 02:39

Last August I was in India. Traveled by train, taxi and air. Stayed at Hotels too. Bought jewllery and some clothes. Only time I used cash was for autos and some tips for the help when I stayed at my relatives houses. I used credit cards, checks or bank transfers. Total expenditure was like 10L. Out of this only 50k was cash. If I could do it everyone could do it. It just needs a little effort.

Very laughable when some one claims that bank employees are under great stress all the time. They have probably one of the strongest unions. The very phrase 'Banker's hours' connotes a very easy going people. I have niece and nephew who preferred bank jobs over IT (both are B Tech).

saip · Post by **saip** » 18 Nov 2016 02:40

. DUPE

RajeshG · Post by **RajeshG** » 18 Nov 2016 02:52

i also remember that even aurangzeb in all his evilness could not manage to go beyond 20% taxation rate. jahangir was at a meagre 5%. i think i read this in dharampal's books.

point is taxes arent really considered as virtuous as some people here state or atleast in such stark contrast as some people state. you guys are in a job you have fixed income salaries. nice. you do setting using LIC policies, indira-vikas-patra etc. people who have business do setting some other way. if you think you are more dharmik then good for you, but there are a lot of people who dont think like that.

and to bunch them together with babus with 1000cr land/gold or politicians with 500cr weddings is silly and out of touch with reality. thats the disconnect.

hanumadu · Post by **hanumadu** » 18 Nov 2016 03:02

GAURAV C SAWANT ‏@gauravcsawant 8h8 hours ago
Golgappa & chai wallahs Go Digital. Support surgical strike on #blackmoney. & politicians bicker. Keeping #IndiaFirst? @IndiaToday 8.25 pm

If golgappa and chai wallahs can go digital, almost every body else can and they will.

surendra · Post by **surendra** » 18 Nov 2016 03:39

The rush at ATMs is not going to ease off even if all ATMs start working. My guess is that a large number of them are just exchanging new currencies for old ones at a premium. They can do this a few times and then deposit old currency by the end of December.

I am not sure what the ATM withdraw limit is in India, but to discourage this, GOI should decrease the limit for at least a couple of weeks until all ATMS are working.

Also, if a large portion of the people in queues are there to make money, we are not going to have any riots.

krisna · Post by **krisna** » 18 Nov 2016 04:25

spent few hours reading only this thread.
leant few things which did not enter my khopdi.

Thanks to all.

useful in SM to tackle some whiners as usual.

vijayk · Post by **vijayk** » 18 Nov 2016 04:46

This is going to be the biggest test for Modi. Most of the crowds are touts/agents who are being used by BM people and even bankers.

Mama,Kujli and all PRESSTITUTE gangs are in the front demonizing him. I only pray for this crisis to be blown over.

durairaaj · Post by **durairaaj** » 18 Nov 2016 05:03

Termites coming out of the woods.
People found 1 crore worth of money on the ground of Avadi Defence Heavy vehicle factory

chanakyaa · Post by **chanakyaa** » 18 Nov 2016 05:28

Wish we had mobile-to-mobile cash transfer mechanism fully operational. All this inconvenience (partly real and partly manufactured) with access to cash can be totally avoided. People may not have a bank account or a debt card, but they have a mobile phone. Mobile-to-mobile cash transfer virtually avoids the cash problem. If we had that in place, we could then incentivize people to transact with mobile-to-mobile using multiple schemes. This is a good opportunity to start moving in that direction. I'm sure people are already thinking about it.

In the meantime, Abhishek Sanghvi's termite-attack-at-his-Chartered-Accountant's-office story was the best....

arvin · Post by **arvin** » 18 Nov 2016 05:37

vijayk wrote:This is going to be the biggest test for Modi. Most of the crowds are touts/agents who are being used by BM people and even bankers.

Mama,Kujli and all PRESSTITUTE gangs are in the front demonizing him. I only pray for this crisis to be blown over.

People just need to be patient till dec30 and be in SF mode till then surviving on the rs 2000 shakarpara and debit card biscuits which constitute the limited supply, which Namo helicopters can air drop braving stinger missile from kejri top, mamta valley and BM hill.

Karthik S · Post by **Karthik S** » 18 Nov 2016 06:04

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eaCr21 ... e=youtu.be

S Gurumurthy's interview to DD on demonetization.

Suraj · Post by **Suraj** » 18 Nov 2016 06:08

RajeshG wrote:and to bunch them together with babus with 1000cr land/gold or politicians with 500cr weddings is silly and out of touch with reality. thats the disconnect.

How are these being bunched together, specifically ?

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 18 Nov 2016 06:24

Sachin wrote:Okay. Updates on my journey back from office at around 2000Hrs. From what I could figure out, the money distribution seems to have a pattern. Today there were no queues in any ATMs in around the first 4kms on the route from office. Need to cross a one street town, where I saw two ATMs fully functional. One I was getting readied, and had around 20 folks. The other one was operational and had around 40 people in line. Beyond that saw a queue in another intersection around 8kms away. The bars near my home seemed to be really empty today, which meant that the folks have no cash to spare. Yesterday it was more crowded. These places do accept cards, but their usual patrons do not have that.

At SHQs branch the much promised Rs.500 notes nor the indelible ink came in. The stuffed their ATM with Rs.100 notes. Even today there were people coming repeatedly to do the currency exchange. Around 10 of them were chased away. The marker pens purchased in the morning did not have any effect as it was very easy to remove the marking. By around 1400Hrs the branch ran out of cash for further transactions. She pegs around 4lakhs of currency was "exchanged" today. Yesterday it was around 8lakh. No body seems to be interested in getting the currency exchanged using accounts, or for that matter opening fresh accounts (enquiries it seems was less than 20 so far).

The longest queues outside BLR banks that I see are people holding A4 size photocopies of documents.

Since I have not stood in a bank queue at all I have to guess that post-demonetization you need photocopies of documents only to exchange money. Or maybe to open an account. I doubt if there is much account opening going on.

Those with bank accounts do not have to carry any documents - they can freely deposit or withdraw cash. I think deposits over Rs 50K require that you have a PAN - but account holders would have provided PAN as part of KYC in any case. My SHQ simply went in, withdrew cash, deposited some of my ill gotten gains in an account with no fuss.

Domestic help will take cheque. Milkman will take cheque. Vegetable vendor will take cheque or is willing to wait till bill builds up to 1000 or 2000. General signs of economic activity are increasing. There are people in shops and eateries. Went to METRO cash & carry yesterday since we wanted to pay by card onlee. I interrogated man at billing counter and asked if business was down. He said that there has been no particular reduction in footfall, but increased use of plastic money.

Footfall in hospitals/clinics saw a drastic fall. But I had a man yesterday who came and saw me specifically to get rid of old notes. Maybe my face looks like I am a note exchanger. I told him there would be no charge for a trivial consultation. Since he insisted I asked him for the newest Rs 500 note he had because I want to preserve one for posterity/posteriority.

What I find fascinating is that the media are so mediocre that all they do is step out of a studio to a bank across the street and do not report that the longest queues are note exchangers, many of who are changing black to white. I have an 82 year old widowed aunt who apparently has tens of lakhs or low crores in banknotes stashed in a bank locker. The right thing to do would be to declare, account for it and pay tax if need be. But lots of people seem to be trying to exchange money Rs 4000 at a time. Rs 4000 x 50 days ain't much in terms of how much you can stash away.

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 18 Nov 2016 06:35

arvin wrote:
vijayk wrote:This is going to be the biggest test for Modi. Most of the crowds are touts/agents who are being used by BM people and even bankers.

Mama,Kujli and all PRESSTITUTE gangs are in the front demonizing him. I only pray for this crisis to be blown over.
People just need to be patient till dec30 and be in SF mode till then surviving on the rs 2000 shakarpara and debit card biscuits which constitute the limited supply, which Namo helicopters can air drop braving stinger missile from kejri top, mamta valley and BM hill.

Too much political farting goes on in the name of "poor". In a country where "poverty" means that one may not earn money every day, one can also buy people for odd jobs like fluffing up crowds or carrying protest placards for money. Rs 500 is more than most Indians earn in a day - so that figure would be able to help by one political protester for a day. If you are not going to give him that 500 he will find other work for himself.

For the first 10-11 days no one has had the money to buy a demonstration. Most demonstrations are bought and paid for - very few are ideological. No one has time and money to waste on shouting slogans for a politician without recompense. Expect that in another 3-7 days there will be enough Rs 100 notes in circulation to buy protesters and create some disturbances for TV. It won't be easy - but by then the monetary situation will be even better for most.

If you look at day to day life in India - if you are leading a domestic lifestyle living in a home there is almost no reason to spend more than Rs 500 per day. Most people live on less.

SSharma · Post by **SSharma** » 18 Nov 2016 06:41

Visiting desh for a bit.

My uncle collected photoID copies of all of us, approx 20 or so.
Got forms signed and gave it all along with cash to an agent to get it exchanged without any commission.

Happened for 2 days, we got 4k per person once and 2k per person the second day. Guess the other 2k went to the regular BM guys.

All was white anyway, deposited some in accounts so we can use plastic as and when possible but haven't had the opportunity since a week.

Plastic, paytm etc has penetration here but not many people actually willing to use it. Maybe fear of fraud or force of habit.

nachiket · Post by **nachiket** » 18 Nov 2016 06:48

SSharma wrote: Plastic, paytm etc has penetration here but not many people actually willing to use it. Maybe fear of fraud or force of habit

Fear of fraud seems to be quite high especially among middle-aged and older generation. I face this all the time when I exhort my parents to increase use of plastic money and avoid carrying around large quantities of cash (all white of course). They read about card duplication scams and identity theft etc. and get scared. They will not use cards even at petrol pumps and restaurants where bills can run high for the fear that someone will clone their card and steal money.

They are less fearful of paytm and similar mobile and bank to bank payments. But the tech barrier comes in the way a bit and very few brick and mortar businesses use it.

And when they do try to use cards in local shops, many a times the businesses refuse because everyone wants cash to avoid paying taxes. Only places you can use them is in malls and big stores which always have card machines.

Suraj · Post by **Suraj** » 18 Nov 2016 06:49

In politics thread there were posts about GoI having to fix the liquidity crunch, so I wrote this:

Over the course of one week, it's impossible to entirely transition from what existed B9 (before 9th) to A9 (after 9th) without many human behavioral issues impacting the process.

Let me put some numbers. There was approximately $250 billion worth of Rs.1000 and Rs.500 in circulation. In Rupees, that is 1,65,00,00,00,00,000 . That is just the money circulating. The size of the informal economy itself - the total value of all transactions conducted using this cash in a year, was ~$750-1000 billion, or Rs.4,95,00,00,00,00,000 to 6,60,00,00,00,00,000 . That is, Rs.16.5 lakh crore of cash supporting informal activity between (my estimate) Rs.49.5 to 66 lakh crore).

As asgkhan points out, most of the daily transactions are done using Rs.100 or less. Only 15% of the total cash (by value) in circulation comprised these bills. We were running our entire basic economy on that little small currency.

We were able to function quite smoothly with just that many notes in circulation for small denominations. However, now we have note hoarding. There's both basic scarcity psychology causing it, and vain attempts to hold prior BM wealth in smaller notes (though there's absolutely no chance to do this at any scale, since 85% of face value cannot be held using the remaining 15% of small denomination notes.

Printing more notes doesn't really fix this. The number of <=Rs.100 notes was plenty until November 9. But not anymore. People are responding to perceived liquidity concerns or scarcity by keeping the notes with them. I'd like to point out that every single note that's in your wallet is a reduction in liquidity by that much. In other words, reactive psychology towards this situation is worsening the matter.

It doesn't actually make sense to 'hold a few notes just in case' or 'there's a liquidity issue so I better keep some notes with me'. While this makes emotional sense to have a level of safety because of perceived difficulty to get notes, this action in fact worsens the situation. Think through this for a moment. It's a deflationary behavior that is known, and in reality, your best chances of ensuring that you can get hold of cash, is to spend the cash and not keep it in your wallet long. The Japanese have been stuck in such a deflationary trap for over 2 decades - BoJ is printing and printing and people are hoarding the cash.

In other words, don't respond to the situation by getting, say Rs.2000 as a safety, so you don't have to go to the bank for another 2 weeks. Don't hastily switch to debit/credit cards. That can be done later. Prioritize using cash now. Get Rs.200 or whatever, daily. Spend it. Do it again. This is actual liquidity - money is being transacted. When one asks for more cash liquidity, please understand this - you are the last mile connection of that liquidity. Sure you could withdraw Rs.2000 and spend it over a week, but that changes the human psychology. Withdrawing less in turn compels you to withdraw again to spend. IF you can withdraw once and spend money in cash daily, do that.

So, the fastest way to fix the liquidity crunch is to withdraw a little, more frequently, and spend it all . Rinse, repeat. It's literally this activity that restores cash liquidity - people have to transact the smaller notes frequently and not hold it any longer than they have to. That is what restores liquidity. Every well meaning person withdrawing Rs.2000 and using debit cards, in fact becomes a counterproductive force against improving liquidity rapidly. Liquidity is created by transactional activity, not by safe holding of cash, and not by government diktat.

abhijitm · Post by **abhijitm** » 18 Nov 2016 07:29

I can confirm by observation that long queues in banks are for exchange. Seen and also got info from friends.

Rahul M · Post by **Rahul M** » 18 Nov 2016 07:59

bharotshontan wrote:Is it me or is the more positive feedback at ground level happening from southernmost end of the country? Civic sense differences playing out?

my experiences from kolkata & delhi have been quite positive. I have posted the kolkata one before.
yesterday I was in an ATM queue in delhi late evening and people were joking around, overall quite positive. one guy made a comment 'modiji is torturing us' ; that got no response and he quietened up. most genuine* lower class people I talked to withdrew 2000 or thereabouts and are set for 2 weeks.

* as against fake noters

Rahul M · Post by **Rahul M** » 18 Nov 2016 08:11

Rishi Verma wrote:RundiTV running a story from Bloomberg written by a Slyme-jug that "demotenization has backfired"

link

ALWAYS a good idea to name the author, in this case the uber-idiot mihir sharma.

abhijitm · Post by **abhijitm** » 18 Nov 2016 08:18

PSU banks are understaff. My nearby Dena bank has only one common queue for deposit, withdrawal and exchange. Right now @8 AM more than 50 are standing in the queue and 99% of them are for exchange. This arrangement is causing problem to the bank account holders who want to deposit and withdraw.

chetak · Post by **chetak** » 18 Nov 2016 08:31

Rahul M wrote:
Rishi Verma wrote:RundiTV running a story from Bloomberg written by a Slyme-jug that "demotenization has backfired"

link
ALWAYS a good idea to name the author, in this case the uber-idiot mihir sharma.

mihir SIMON sharma. Full name, saar.

The agenda, then becomes clear.

abhijitm · Post by **abhijitm** » 18 Nov 2016 08:31

Rahul M wrote:
Rishi Verma wrote:RundiTV running a story from Bloomberg written by a Slyme-jug that "demotenization has backfired"

link
ALWAYS a good idea to name the author, in this case the uber-idiot mihir sharma.

I am suspecting goi has unofficially warned indian media against scare mongering. So I guess those assho!$ are surrogating foreign media now.

kvraghav · Post by **kvraghav** » 18 Nov 2016 08:50

All the bank queues are less than 5 people today morning.The stark difference is previously every bank had 40 people waiting, now only two had nearly 40 people and all others less than 5. One of them is a big SBI branch I can expect large number of account holders but other is a BOI branch. I suspect they are not using the ink. Even the post office had 3 people. The ATM crowd is at 20 odd people. Good to see some daily labourers in the ATM queue.

madhu · Post by **madhu** » 18 Nov 2016 10:11

habal wrote:
You do not know abcd about what was said. You are hurt someone has dared cast an eye on your favorite party and your idol modiji. You have no idea and nor have you counted any bundles.

A bundle is 1000 notes of ₹100 and often when you open ₹100 bundles they do come short but they are never passed on to customers. When doing a day-end though you do have to reconcile this difference by puttimg up cash from own pocket but that extends working hours because one has to trace exact reason for difference.

I am sorry. My wife is a banker and she has handled the cash. In past 8 years she has lost only two or three times that to in the initial stages say about 1000 or 2000 rs only.
She has never found the mistake in bundles given by currency chest. The mistakes are generally clerical error where the person has entered wrongly into the system or taken short / given excess. I do not agree with your statement that money from currency chest have shot.

vina · Post by **vina** » 18 Nov 2016 10:29

RajeshG wrote: if for eg the same thing was incentivised by govt saying you can claim salaries paid to house-help etc as expenses then i am sure the baniya will become very interested and that much money will become more accountable. for govt it generates employment anyway - you want more of it anyway - so it does make sense to incentivise it ? .

The "bania" does it ANWAYS, right NOW. He will expense the salaries paid for everything, including the maid, driver, the car (he will get depreciation benefit) , petrol/diesel, electricity ,computer, cell phone, everything as expense and the remaining after those "expenses" is only offered as tax and even there , they cheat.

Dont confuse salaried class with the business man. The salaried class can't claim those kind of expenses against income. You pay the maid/driver --> you can't claim the salaries paid to them as expense. A salary man buys car ? No luck with depreciation. A business man self employed buys a car for Rs 40 L ? You depreciate it over 5 years or whatever it is and you get a straight depreciation (around 8L per year if over 5 years) , you claim the driver's salary, you claim fuel bills!

The doctor, lawyer, CA, (and also me..) can do it and we do of course do it. I don't expense the driver's salary cos he is used to drive SHQ around only and I don't use two cars. Maid too, we don't expense since I didn't declare our home as a "home office" or whatever it is and claim that the maid does cleaning/dusting/answering phone for the home office.

Went to METRO cash & carry yesterday since we wanted to pay by card onlee.

See, we PissNessMen can go to Metro Cash & Carry onree, not the Mango man or the security guard outside .Why ? Because of the idiocy of preventing "multi brand retail" , while Daaktur Saab and I show our PissNess registrations and get the Metro Cash and carry card and shop inside at wholesale rates/ deep discounts on stuff which are sold outside the gates at over 20% markups in some cases. In fact, some of the offers/packaging /deals etc there are available nowhere else /difficult to find on a retail shelf. And consider who needs to shop in Metro Cash & Carry more ? The low income security guard for his monthly grocery or me and Daaktur Saab ?

NRao · Post by **NRao** » 18 Nov 2016 10:33

Withdraw all Taxes, Says Organisation That Claims to Have Come up with Demonetisation Idea

Manish_Sharma · Post by **Manish_Sharma** » 18 Nov 2016 10:50

^Posting the above in full :

If the government had fully implemented a five-point plan for completely overhauling India’s monetary and taxation system, the common citizen would not have gone through these hardships. “But,” says Arun Bokil, a Pune-based chartered accountant, “they didn’t, and we can see the results. However, the government should not be blamed for these problems.”

Bokil is the founder of Arthakranti (economic revolution) which calls itself a tax research organisation and which claims to be the brains behind the government’s demonetisation of 500 rupee and 1000 rupee notes. The organisation’s website declares, “aao milkar desh sanvare” (let’s all join hands to make this country prosper). “Today our country is facing multitude complex problems, impacting each one of us our families. The origin of these problems lies in the flawed monetary system.”

Bokil says he had made a presentation to Narendra Modi in 2013 when he was the chief minister of Gujarat. Claiming that the organisation is ‘politically neutral’, its officials say they had also met Rahul Gandhi “hardly gave us nine seconds for presentation. Nitin Gadkari who was shown presentation in 2003 appreciated the proposals but expressed his inability to implement at BJP was not in power then. It was Narendra Modi who took keen interest. In December 2013, we were given nine minutes for presentation. But it got extended to two hours as Modi got interested. Since then we have been in touch with his team. And since he has become PM, we have been in touch with the PMO with our proposals.” There has been no official word whether the PMO took Arthakranti’s proposals into account before the prime minister made the shock announcement of demonetisation. Arthakranti officials also refused to answer questions on whether the government or the PMO had acknowledged their meetings or their inputs.

The presentation included five proposals and the organisation was convinced that its ‘scientific proposals” would completely transform the current Indian socio-economic scenario and control black money, corruption and inflation.

The proposals are-

Withdrawal of all 56 taxes including central, state and local body government taxes excluding customs or import duty.
Replace existing taxes with Bank Transaction Tax (BTT). That means every transaction routed through a bank will attract a 2% deduction as transaction tax. This tax will be credited at all government levels, central, state and local, at a fixed percentage. Banks will get a tiny percentage too.
Total withdrawal of high denomination currency above Rs 50 from circulation.
Cash transactions will not attract BTT but the upper limit of cash transactions should be Rs 2000. That means people with a low income do not have to pay taxes. Once their income gets increased they have to pay taxes automatically.
Cash transactions above this limit will not enjoy any legal protection.

Yamalji Malkar, a member of the organisation, says, “Apart from income tax, Indian have to also pay indirect taxes on almost all commodities from match boxes to clothes. Thus everybody including the poor pays taxes. With the abolition of all existing taxes as proposed by Arthakranti and implementation of BTT, the burden of taxes on Indians will reduce to just 10%.”

He adds, “the removal of high denomination currency and no legal support to cash transaction above Rs 2000 will make cash transactions impractical. People will have no option but transact through the banking system. This way a majority of current 80% of cash transactions will turn into bank transactions.”

Citizens at large will benefit, Arthakranti says. With the abolition of taxes, prices of commodities will go down. For example, the price of diesel will go down to Rs 47 from Rs 60, according to Arthkranti’s estimates. Taxes will be turned over to banks on credit automatically and hence people won’t even have fill forms either.

Banks will get liquidity and this will decrease interest rates to below 10%, they claim. The State Bank of India, which has received huge deposits after the scrapping of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes has already announced an interest rate cut.

But what about the difficulties being faced by the people after the demonitsation? Arthakranti says these are temporary problems and the country at large will benefit from the move. They are happy with the government’s move and think more steps are in the offing.

Amol Phalke, also a member of the organisation, predicts that the new notes of Rs 500 and Rs 2000 which the government has issued are a temporary measure. “You will see the government will do away with high denomination notes completely.”

chetak · Post by **chetak** » 18 Nov 2016 10:52

miracles of demonetization .........

micracle seems to have hit directly in his butt.

pulling out of election after election and now dumping gujarat.

panjab and goa, the next sites of the miracle??

kapilrdave · Post by **kapilrdave** » 18 Nov 2016 11:21

^^ Good for him as long as he keeps minimum 200km away from Modi-land. Bad for us that we lost an opportunity to see many more videos of mango junta abusing him royally.

chetak · Post by **chetak** » 18 Nov 2016 11:28

Election commission has cautioned against the use of indelible ink as impending elections in some states will make it very difficult for voters to vote there.

Prasad · Post by **Prasad** » 18 Nov 2016 11:32

chanakyaa wrote:Wish we had mobile-to-mobile cash transfer mechanism fully operational. All this inconvenience (partly real and partly manufactured) with access to cash can be totally avoided. People may not have a bank account or a debt card, but they have a mobile phone. Mobile-to-mobile cash transfer virtually avoids the cash problem. If we had that in place, we could then incentivize people to transact with mobile-to-mobile using multiple schemes. This is a good opportunity to start moving in that direction. I'm sure people are already thinking about it.

In the meantime, Abhishek Sanghvi's termite-attack-at-his-Chartered-Accountant's-office story was the best....

UPI can do that really. Scan a QR code or just punch in the other's Virtual Payment Address(VPA) and ping! its done. Just hope banks really push this and get on board.

Marten · Post by **Marten** » 18 Nov 2016 11:36

Prasad, are you familiar with UPI security framework?

Sicanta · Post by **Sicanta** » 18 Nov 2016 11:44

nachiket wrote:
SSharma wrote: Plastic, paytm etc has penetration here but not many people actually willing to use it. Maybe fear of fraud or force of habit
Fear of fraud seems to be quite high especially among middle-aged and older generation. I face this all the time when I exhort my parents to increase use of plastic money and avoid carrying around large quantities of cash (all white of course). They read about card duplication scams and identity theft etc. and get scared. They will not use cards even at petrol pumps and restaurants where bills can run high for the fear that someone will clone their card and steal money.

They are less fearful of paytm and similar mobile and bank to bank payments. But the tech barrier comes in the way a bit and very few brick and mortar businesses use it.

And when they do try to use cards in local shops, many a times the businesses refuse because everyone wants cash to avoid paying taxes. Only places you can use them is in malls and big stores which always have card machines.

+100 , UPI may make a difference here.

kapilrdave · Post by **kapilrdave** » 18 Nov 2016 11:55

chetak wrote:Election commission has cautioned against the use of indelible ink as impending elections in some states will make it very difficult for voters to vote there.

ECI can go take a hike, literally. Elections are months away for god's sake. And in any case, protocol can be changed to mark another finger than the index finger.

I find it amusing (or rather ridiculous) that people can find strange excuses and logic to oppose some very logical and necessary steps. And today we have even the like of Arun Shauri opposing demonetization and abusing our PM. For what? A seat in ministry

?

I've stopped watching TV for long because it was hurting my BP everyday.

Prasad · Post by **Prasad** » 18 Nov 2016 12:04

Marten wrote:Prasad, are you familiar with UPI security framework?

No idea. I've used it. Thats all.