(Guest Column)
This blog piece is from Swati Deb on the impact of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's unprecedented currency ban and fight against black money and terror funding
This blog piece is from Swati Deb on the impact of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's unprecedented currency ban and fight against black money and terror funding
Indians by nature find
it distasteful to admit that anything has gone wrong. Thus drastic changes to
the status quo as a phenomenon are anti-thesis to basic Indianness. This
applies to the people of north east also – where either life so far has been preferred
to be ‘Lahe Lahe (take it easy)’ in Assam or indifference – with the local
maxim (“Na jaane ho – How do I know”) as in Nagaland.
So in this land of
status- quoists – it was taken for granted that corruption and black money are
part of life. But courage is perhaps not the mere absence of fear. Prime
Minister Narendra Modi has again displayed the mastery over it. It’s a true
gamble.
As a hardliner
‘Hindutva’ leader and successful Chief Minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi has
been always known for his “decisiveness”.
He also has a knack of making most of his decisions powerful weaponry by
mixing the same with good timing and unconventional style. But besides ‘decisiveness’,
despite that time and again he has been a loner, Modi has displayed some
‘courage’. This synthesis of “courage and decisiveness” often leads to a few
drastic outcomes – good, bad and somewhat grey.
Of all his major decisions so far as Indian Prime
Minister, the decision to outlaw currency notes worth Rs1000 and Rs 500 with
immediate effect from Nov 8-9 (2016) mid-night by Modi would be regarded as the
most significant game-changer.
“These notes will not be acceptable
for transactions from midnight onwards. The five hundred and thousand rupee
notes hoarded by anti-national and anti-social elements will become just
worthless pieces of paper,” Modi said in his rare and hurriedly convened
television address to the nation on Tuesday evening.
His admirers have called it
“surgical strikes” against Black money. He said the move was to “break the grip
of corruption and black money”. All these actually
linked to the fake currency and terror
funding. In effect, in the wilds
of north east – where too besides ‘corruption’ – cash dealings are way of life
– the Modi Sarkar has dealt the severest blow to the numerous insurgent groups
those who survive and thrive with the ‘extortion’ industry.
'Guest writer' |
According to
French scholar and columnist Christophe Jaffrelot,
as Gujarat Chief Minister, Modi was perhaps “less
a politician than a manager”.
In the context of Modi’s latest moves to fight
black money menace, thus it can be safely said that his government has acted
against the prevailing intellectual consensus and middle class indifference.
Prime Minister has acted more like a super-CEO. True, the courageous moves have
always fascinated Modi. Even unlike his one-time mentor LK Advani, in the past
too Modi did not pretend to be a ‘secular’.
In fact, he has never been shy of
his hardcore Hindutva background. This has fetched him dividends.
Now what lies ahead both in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh
or states like Manipur remains to be seen. But the impact of ‘surgical strikes’
against fake currency and black money would certainly hit the north east
militant groups rather adversely.
There are ample reasons for this. Firstly, banking
system came to some of these ethnic tribal communities only as a
post-Independence phenomenon. Originally, the tribal groups like Nagas believed
in barter system.
Old timers still recall the hill native tribes used to come
down to valleys and exchanged chicken, raw meat, vegetables and fruits with
salt and some money and rice with the plains dwellers in Assam.
But when the hard
cash or money came in to the system, it virtually came with a vengeance into
the political system. Thus the electoral politics was slowly polluted. Wealth
and Wine became two major weaknesses of the locals and the same has been well
exploited by Indian system and intelligence sleuths.Moreover, use of swipe machines and debit or credit
cards are still not popular enough in the north east.
The menace of greed for money – precisely the easy
cash flow - passed onto other areas of tribal life including the insurgents
quite swiftly. In states like Tripura, the fascination for money even sought to
legitimize ‘kidnapping’ of senior government officials and traders by militant
groups. Extortions slowly became an order of the day in Manipur, Assam and
Nagaland.
But as the Biblical belief goes, the
ill-gotten money – thanks to the pro-Hindutva leader - has been now rendered “worthless
piece of papers”.
Often we get to hear
that for simpleton tribals and others in the region, the issues of corruption
or greed revolve around the traditional ‘chicken and egg’ theory – on what came
first. Many locals often also relate corruption in northeast as ‘a menace
imported from India’. But can people be trapped into a gimmick of easy money,
if they do not want to be?
In
fact, the ‘love or greed’ for money have led to metamorphosis among some
militant groups. Not long ago in hubs like Dimapur, from profit oriented
EXTORTIONS, a few militant groups also wanted to have a monopoly control on
business of most saleable items like chicken and mushroom. For them, Modi’s
demonetizing decisions are nothing less than ‘surgical strikes’. For them, the decision could not have come as a most effective method of leaving some people high and dry.
(ends)
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