“I believe that man will not merely endure: he will
prevail…The poet’s, the writer’s duty is to write these things. It is his
privilege to help men endure by lifting his heart.”- William Falkner, Nobel
acceptance speech, December, 10th, 1950
The moments of crisis brings out the best and worst of
human spirits. Then there are moments which rewrite the course of a nation. For
India, the wars of 62, 65 and 1971 were such moments, so was the Emergency
imposed in the late seventies by the Congress government. When we look at those
moments, we wade through the old, black and white pictures of those family
photographs and wonder where our parents were when these events were unfolding.
I am writing this on #Demonetization, which is one such historic event.
Before you sigh, roll your eyes upwards and throw your
arms up in despair, and walk away, let me put forth the disclaimer. I am not an
all knowing economist; I am also not an all-feeling journalist. I am the common
man, who has stood his turn in the queues to exchange the currency and then to
withdraw the money.
I write. I write poetry and fiction, mostly. But then why
am I writing and further muddying the waters in which already too many people
have stepped in. That is answered by Faulkner in his Noble Prize acceptance
speech. I write on behalf of the poor man behind whose name every black money
hoarding businessman, every corrupt politician, every tainted bureaucrat hides.
Tragic stories are floating in the market. But then, they
are just being visible now. The poor man is confounded as rumors float. Some
come and tell him that his zero-balance bank account will be acquired by the
government, with all the money into it. But you stand in the queue and the
anecdotal poor man is not complaining. He stands in silence, with great grace.
He is the man who sends his son to army to stand guard on the Line of control.
He is not a retired income-tax officer, nor will any senior Income Tax officer
marry him. He is facing unprecedented hardships. He neither has resources nor
inclination to visit exotic foreign location for introspection for months.
Unlike a middle-aged man about to touch his fifties and still in search of his
widely anticipated political mojo, he makes money each day and feeds his
family.
He does not seek greatness. It is just logical. He
understands that when things of this magnitude happen in a country of this magnitude,
inconveniences will happen. He knows the inconvenience of processes first hand,
much better than those who claim to represent him, when he had visited a
government officer to get something as basic as a BPL card or a Ration card,
and was asked to pay bribe in cash. This demonetization has discomforted that
Babu. What is great about this drive is that it even hits those who charged in
kind for making of a ration card. He laments that a child died because the
parents could not pay in the new currency. But amid all the noise he
understands that even without demonetization, that heartless hospital would
have been turning away kids who had no currency at all. He understands that
with this revolutionary effort, maybe, just maybe, cash will reach some hands,
or better still, there will be some hospitals which will not need currency, new
or old, to attend to a dying child.
There have been plenty of stories about maids. Once again,
please don’t shut your laptop down so hard. The helps I had at home, both of
them had the zero-balance account under the PM Jan-dhan scheme, but had never
deposited any money. I asked them why. They had their fears. This is the basic
of the worries, whatever might be. For long, we were under slavery. The
government did not belong to the people. When the British left, white officers
were replaced by brown baboos. Congress was a club of rich people and the
Jawahar Lal Nehru, foreign educated, son of a rich lawyer of Allahabad became
the first Prime minister, even when the appointed committee chose the one who
began his political career from peasants’ movement in Bardoli. The voice of the
people was vetoed and the man whose dad knew the founder of the new company
called India, became the CEO.
The distrust to the government was thus perpetuated and a
layered society was created as dynastic rule was legitimized, slowly but
surely. It is this distrust which makes it difficult for the poor to bear the
trouble of demonetization and its fall-out. It is truly to the credit of the PM
that poor have not only been able to overcome this inherent distrust towards
the government, the rulers; they have rather risen in his strongest support.
It has placed the opposition in a very difficult
situation. They are out on the street protesting. Situation is very funny. The
opposition is out protesting, supposedly on behalf of the poor, while those
they claim to represent are protesting their protest. Some politicians are so distraught by the loss
of their personal, illegal wealth that they are unable to detect the disgust
that their desperate dramas are creating in the minds of those they claim to be
representing. This is not to say that there is no inconvenience. There is. Not
everyone has means to do online commerce. Which is sad after almost seventy
years of independence. But things are not as bad as the naysayer claim they
are. Truth always lie somewhere in the middle of the extremes. True, fifty
regrettable deaths have happened. Some out of those fifty (remember in a nation
of 125 Crores), were later found to be unrelated to the government move
(sample, someone died counting new currency notes, would she have not died if
the notes she was counting were old currency? Or Newspapers reported someone
died at the ATM in Mumbai, at a place where there was no ATM.). But consider
the proportion. Only two months back, around the same number of people died and
was in news. Only, the deaths were not spread across 125 Cr people, it was
limited to the city of Delhi. And the CEO of Delhi, the Chief Minister, most
incensed by this Anti- Black money move, submitted the courts that he had
managed to spare only five minutes to spend in his office as the city reeled
under epidemic. How seriously can one take his concerns?
The poor have been
most decent and graceful under such testing times. The rich and affluent have
been crying foul. The poor understand that the history is being made. And he
wonders that some years down the line, the same question will be asked. Where
were you when this historic fight against corruption and black money was
initiated? Did you handle it with the quiet dignity and poise of the poor, or with
the noisy, complaining arrogance of the affluent when the nation sought your
support to create a better nation for future generations? Future will pose that existential question to all of us when the time comes- What did you do when your nation called you for your services? What did you do when for the first time the gulf of distrust between the government and its people, perforce was being filled, as an unnoticed fallout of an anti-corruption move? How did you respond when the economy was shaken and cashless and accountable business became the order of the day for the first time in the life of our nation? Did you welcome it as a mature citizen or you went down as a cribbing, complaining kid? I write not with data. I write as an ode to the poor man in the queue, I write to help him endure this moment by lifting his heart. Let us all do that.
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