By Valson Thampu

Fifty years is a lot of time. Especially when it ripples with the suffering of savasaukarod (1.25 billion) people. It is time that the basics of demonetization are confronted. By now we know how short and how painful the short-term pain is. What is not clear is the shape and scope of the long-term gain sold to us.

It is not callous to ask the suffering people to have patience. What is cruelly callous is to ask them to do so, without giving them any basis for this unending period of hope, like being obliged to0 wait for the arrival of a train rumored to be commissioned no one knows when.

With specific reference to this ‘long term gain’ a friend asked me, “What do you think this is, a soccer finals or the opening match of an indefinite cricket test matchseries?” In both instances, there is short term pain and long term gain. The difference is that the long-term gain in the latter case is too long and indeterminate to be worth the wait. The long wait threatens to morph into an illusion.

“I feel invited,” remarked yet another naïve acquaintance of mine, with a heart for good food, “to a big meal, “but no date is fixed and it is not even clear if it is breakfast, lunch or supper.”

People are, not surprisingly, getting restive.

What does not augur well for the Government is that the initial excitement is now wearing out. Realities are coming to the fore. Questions are being asked. Anger is in the air.

It is high time a few questions are raised.

Are we living, any longer, in a democracy? Is not the will of the people supreme in democracy? Where is the will of the people in any aspect of demonetization?

We did will it. We weren’t consulted. We were simply knocked into it. The opposition parties show poor understanding in calling this a ‘financial emergency,’ which it is not. Emergency is, by definition, something that comes and goes. It’s of short shelf-life. Demonetization is the very opposite of that. It is forever. If we are to do justice to its genius and genre, it must be called financial tyranny.

But let us return to the sacrifices we are urged to make, to make monetization tick. The very first question that emerges from the invocation of this religious concept is: Will the 80-odd people, who died standing in queues, be hailed as martyrs? Why not? Were they not making supreme sacrifices? And what is the disconnect between sacrifice and martyrdom? Going by the meaning of ‘martyrdom’ if anyone qualifies for martyrdom, these victims do. Why shouldn’t memorials be set up for them? Why not a day of national mourning?

Well, we know why. Perished they’ve in queues. But they were zeroes. Citizens all but, light years away from being VVIPs. Their life does not have the value of cattle. None of them is even a number, you see. They are mere zeroes. That is why 84 deaths do not count. The sum of zeroes is still zero. That’s the arithmetic of demonetization.

Sadly, I happened to see the anguish in which one of them died. I could not resist the feeling, pardon me, that he was a human being. Though not comely and fashionable, though scrawny and wizened with age, he stilled looked a fellow human being. He ‘breathed’ his last in the ponderous weariness of morality! And did not burst like a bubble.

This is what demonetization has done to us. It has divided India into two parts with a wide, impassable gulf between the two. The zeroes who stand, looking jaded, beggarly, cringing in long queues, day after day. You see them. The second part of India is invisible. They are our heroes. The rich and the mighty, who are milky white in respect of money. You know them, don’t you? If you don’t, attend any one of the weddings billed at above Rs. 100 crores. All white. No black. All black money is in the pockets or stomachs of the zeroes dotting the queues.

What makes us, the zeroes, increasingly skeptical about this proffered “long term gain” is that the goal-posts are being shifted continually. Though stupid, we can at least understand that what is fluid is utterly unpredictable.What is this cashless society? We never wanted such a thing. It is like the story of a Marxist enthusiastic just before the October Revolution in Russia.

“When the party comes to power,” he waxed eloquent, “everyone will be given an automobile”

“What I don’t want a car, asked an innocent bystander.
“You will be shot.”

All right. You ask us, ordinary citizens, to make sacrifices. But do you know that before you ask us to make sacrifices, you have to believe in our worth as human beings. Zeroes cannot make sacrifices. Sacrifice involves what is supremely valuable. Zeroes can perish like mosquitoes, but not make sacrifices.

Please decide: either you fix us like zeroes in queues or ask us to make sacrifices. Please don’t do both. Treat us like fellow human beings. “Well, that’s a trap,” you say? You are right. If we have worth, the question would arise: why should sacrifices be made only by us and not by some of your tribe as well?

In our experience your slick slogan is now beginning to lose its sheen. It is no longer, “Short term pain and long term gain.” It is, “Short term euphoria and long term malaria.” Demonetization has brought out the deep division in our society as nothing else ever before has. The cleavage between India championed by Modi, and Bharat, where the rest of us live, are now as wide open as the rift in the Mulayam Singh Yadav Parivar. Jai Bharat!

(Valson Thampu is former principal of St. Stephen’s College, Delhi)