Hopefully the cash crunch will settle in coming months
I doubt that its going to any time soon or at least soon enough for it not leave long lasting damage. Based on the overly optimistic estimates around multiple shifts and presses running 24/7 without failures, its going to take 6-8 months. Again, what people need is petty cash and not Rs 2000 notes and we have yet to see that being prioritized others than in empty words.
The amount of corruption by the bank officials is being exposed on daily basis, who'll put the govt officials to shame.
So many IT raids indicates that what a govt can achieve if it wholeheartedly tries to get something working.
A small and selective raid here and there is little more than hogwash. How much amount have they caught in all these raids so far? Rs 4000 crore? Even with the estimation 3% for the black money in cash form, it should still be at least 1.5~2 lac crore. 4000 crore is like what fraction of that fraction?
Modi made tall claims that he will bring back all the black money in hidden in every nook and corner, but what about the people flaunting their black money in plain eye sight right from Modi's own cabinet? Nitin Gadkari for instance never paid income tax in his whole damn life and his annual income is Rs 44,000 as per his 2008 ITR, and 2.47 lac as per 2013 ITR, but that didn't stop him from spending Rs 200 crore (or more) apiece for the lavish wedding of his son in 2010 and more recently his daughters wedding right in the middle of this fiasco. No raids against him. Even sent details to the IT dept email id setup for whistle blowing (not that like there's anything hidden here to necessitate whistle blowing), but as expected, no action and no hopes of that happening in future.
If PM was really interested in black money, I bet that a proper scrutiny of this single guy alone will yield several thousand crore's (if not lac's) of black money.
One more illogical argument is black money hoarders aren't affected and not seen in ATM Qs. Let's be clear a person hoarding say 100cr in black will be earning at least 75k per day, do you expect him to stand in Qs? It all depends on how many black money hoarders you know, and how many of them will confide with you thinking that you'll be able to help them get rid of the stash? In my experience there's equally palpable fear on their side too.
Maybe among the small scale hoarders. The large scale ones don't give a damn because its not hard earned money and even if they throw it away, they will just earn more later. Do you think that people like Nitin Gadkari would give a damn about literally throwing way a few 10's or 100 core of cash when they have thousands of crores of black money hoarded up outside the country or invested here and there and having the means and ability to amass more black money.
So, its of-course, only the innocent people suffering. In any case, as soon as a single innocent person suffers in the process of supposed catching of wrongdoers, its already a crime on the people and miscarriage of justice.
The Indian Jugaad seems to be working much effectively in converting the stash, but still you can't say Demonetisation has been totally ineffective. With 20 - 35% commission rates for currency conversion, you have to acknowledge that the move has reduced black money by 30% at least.
LOL @ the calculation of the 30% reduction figure. If some thief stole Rs 1000 from you and gives a Rs 300 cut to a fellow thief, does that mean that you lost only Rs 700 now since the thief who stole from you has only Rs 700 ?
How is a corrupt person with 100 Crore black money giving 30 crore to corrupt bank official equate to 30% reduction in black money. Here is what it means. Black money has has remained the same, but the corruption has increased from before since exchanging cash this way counts as as an act of corruption. As for the cost, don't forget that there is cost associated with printing the new currency, transporting it, collection the old currency and destroying it.
So what it means is that after spending 1.3~1.5 lac crore (and counting since the long term damage is still hard to estimate) in an the exercise to supposedly catch about 1.5 lac crore of black money which a small fraction of the black economy, the govt caught only a small fraction of that fraction. At the same time, corruption has increased and number of people with black money has increased. i.e 1 person with black money previously vs 2 persons with 70% and 30% cuts or in other cases even 500 people with small cuts for helping deposit the cash.
Move to a cashless economy could've been organized much earlier before Demonetisation. But people wouldn't have shown much interest if it was pushed earlier. We Indians are more like Rockets (no not in speed sense), we don't move until our a** is on fire.
In the present fiasco, it is little more than hogwash to force people to part with their cash and more importantly gold in future and lose their personal freedom in the process. There is a reason why many govt's want to push people toward cashless economy and societies that want to keep their freedom and rights intact do not allow that. In such societies, even if govt succeeds to some extent, what's going to happen is that the people will end up creating some alternative form of currency and start using that instead.
Its all fine and dandy to say that we can be cashless, but there are lot many failure points for a cashless system compared to simple physical cash. What happens to a cashless society when internet/phone connectivity is lost for some reason? In last month alone, several times I ended up not being able to buy my lunch using credit card due to network problems and other issues with the card readers and to go without. Same for Digital wallets like PayTM. Just a few days back, all hell broke lose when PayTM stopped working for a couple of hours. The govt keeps repeating that they are not talking about 100% cashless system, but where is the cash in the first place. I had to go without lunch despite having money in my bank account and holding 2 credit cards and that would not have happened if I had some usable cash for backup.