Modier than Modi

At first read, the title may make no sense (I hear you saying, “... as if the rest of what you write makes sense!”, and I will let go at that).

You have heard many anglophiles being described, with undisguised contempt, as “More British than the Brits”. I have heard this said of Naipaul, a transplant Brit, no more. It is in this sense the title needs to be understood.

I know of a food court type of place where you bought tokens at one centralized counter and bought foods of your choice at the appropriate vendor and got on with your eating, drinking, watching TV etc. Some months ago, this food court lost that character. It was each vendor for his/her own, but with a twist. You could not pay in cash at any of the vendors and what more the centralized billing was done away with it. If you suspected that this was in response to Modi’s call for cashless / less-cash economy (I have never understood the meaning of either of these) in the wake of the demonetization exercise, you could not be more right.

Then, there were some murmurs and perhaps in response to them, the old cash counter was open, but designed for limited transactions only. Now, people had a choice – cash or cashless. But, my thoughts strayed slightly far away from the prime minister. It reached into the office of the Governor, Reserve Bank of India. You see, the currency notes we use have no inherent worth. They are merely promissory notes, IOUs, underwritten by the Government of India.

Now, by not accepting the currency notes I am ready to tender at the individual vendors, they are saying, implicitly yet loudly, “Go, keep your IOUs to yourselves!”

I know the following to be true: Governor of RBI is beholden to the Finance Ministry, who, of course is beholden to the office of the prime minister. This is how the demonetization was promulgated by the prime minister himself, sidelining the finance minister, and of course, down the pecking order, the governor of RBI. First, it was the finance minister who twirled his baton to put all kinds of spin on the government’s effort to wring out black money, stop funding for terrorism and ... later on, the RBI governor added his two bits. After a month or two of chaos, we are back to some kind of normalcy.

But what I saw at the food court was some local bigwig currying favour with the Government of India. There has been no ordinance from the prime minister saying no cash transactions for everyday items. Have you? I guess not.

The near normalcy is being stirred by the local honchos in their own universe. I cannot see any logic beyond this for the food court to go from cashless/ less-cash to no cash economy. Even Modi did not promulgate an ordinance demanding no cash economy. But, here the powers that be who control the food court have done precisely that.

Now, I hope you understand the title – Modier than Modi.

Raghuram