8 ms·

My understanding is that India's new rules on the high denomination notes was intended to curtail corruption. This was a major topic of discussion in my workpla

My understanding is that India's new rules on the high denomination notes was intended to curtail corruption. This was a major topic of discussion in my workplace as we have many Indian developers. Most of them were very proud that this action was taken. So it was a surprise to me to read the significantly negative tone in the BBC article. As a check, I googled "accuracy of BBC articles on India" and encountered the following : https://www.quora.com/Why-does-BBC-publish-more-negative-news-about-India https://www.quora.com/Why-does-BBC-publish-more-negative-new... "It is true that channels like BBC and CNN have long tradition of editorializing many issues of third world countries. So when any major development happens in countries like India, Pakistan or China, they go on with their usual views on the subject rather than looking at it through fresh lenses."

rwbt 10y ago
That might be true, but your Indian colleagues are probably well off with much of their transactions happening in plastic/electronic anyways, so this will have very little effect on their day to day lives. Since much of the Indian economy is cash based, there is a lot of frustration in the working class and there is a serious cash (as in bank notes) crunch.
- nitinreddy88 10y ago
  I do accept this fact. Is there better option? I am quite sure this decision was taken after discussing with lot of people who might have done PhDs in Economics and serving for Govt.
  - meira 10y ago
    Not necessarily. It is never a good premise to expect good faith from politicians.
  - rwbt 10y ago
    I don't know if there is a better option but the GoI definitely didn't think this throughly. Countries that demonetized in the past did this over a span of a time to prevent panic and fear. If the Govt set a deadline instead of abolishing them overnight that would go a lot smoother. Sure, that'll give 'some' tax evaders time to plan their 'exit' smoothly but it'll make lives of millions so much easier. Most likely, the evaders use that money to buy gold, so the Govt can temporarily track all gold purchases (they do it anyways for puchases over 2 lakh rupees). Even if they end up spending the cash on inflated real estate, they're in someways helping the economy instead of hoarding the cash and will end up in someone's bank account eventually. Also, all the big tax evaders rarely hoard cash. They usually have offshore accounts and sophisticated corporate structures. Secondly, the new notes being minted have no additional security features. The RBI confirmed that the new 500 and 2000 bank notes carry the same security features as the previous ones, which probably makes it similarly easy to counterfeit. The RBI previously claimed that it would take 5-6 years to design notes with new security features and I think they should've waited until they have better bank notes to curb fake notes.
  - wav-part 10y ago
    > I am quite sure this decision was taken after discussing with lot of people who might have done PhDs in Economics and serving for Govt. I have no hope for this country to find such views on HN of all places. EDIT: I acknowledge this is low content comment. So I quote "the first job of an economist is to tell governments what they cannot do". Please sit back and give this a fair read [1]. [1] https://mises.org/about-mises/what-austrian-economics https://mises.org/about-mises/what-austrian-economics
  - kamaal 10y ago
    >>I do accept this fact. Is there better option? Which fact do you not accept? Do you believe every person in India has a bank account? Every person has credit cards? Debit cards? Do you believe purchasing chain from production to end consumers has infrastructure for electronic transactions? Or that there is a way to make the economy run when close to 80% of the money is taken out of circulation? >>I am quite sure this decision was taken after discussing with lot of people who might have done PhDs in Economics and serving for Govt. That doesn't mean much when the results on the ground say the opposite.
    - swatkat 10y ago
      Well, due to Prime Minister's Jan Dhan Yojana scheme, a lot more people have bank accounts and debit cards now. Over 220 million bank accounts were opened since 2014. People who have those accounts can actually make use of them now.
      - kamaal 10y ago
        A lot more != All, let alone that. A lot more != Everybody-in-the-purchase-chain. Now it was a known fact that 80% of the currency will go out of rotation. Now regardless of whether you have an account, 80% of the money people use to trade is gone! Doesn't help if you have a account either. You don't have money to buy stuff. Your point is if(and that is a big 'if' given 80% is gone!) you have money you could deposit it. Not spend it.
        swatkat 10y ago
        Well, I didn't actually say 'lot more == all'. I was just mentioning that PMJDY bank accounts and debit cards would ease things a bit for the people who have them, compared to the days when they had no bank accounts whatsoever (remember, PMJDY bank accounts are specially tailored for people with low income and/or unstructured income). Anyway, you don't need a bank account to exchange demonetized currency notes.
        kamaal 10y ago
  - sufiyan 10y ago
    Nope. This decision seems to have happened at the whim of 3 people - the PM, the finance minister, the RBI governor. Clearly they didn't even proof read the notes. The back side of the 2k rupee notes is a mess. They screwed up the spelling of 2 in Hindi and 1000 in Urdu making it Bazaar from Hazaar
    - kranner 10y ago
      I can read Urdu and from what I can make out in images of the note, the Urdu text is fine. The font could have been better. The orthographic sign that makes the H in 'hazaar' is correct; the 'be' nuqta is a different shape. There should have been a hair-width's space after the 'dal' in 'do', but it is easily readable as 'dal' and not 'lam' as some people are claiming.
      - sufiyan 10y ago
        Yes. So, can I read Urdu and the hey looks like a bey. ب has the dot below it which you can clearly see in all images. ح doesn't have any dots beneath it.
        kranner 10y ago
        Hazaar is spelt with a choti he which does have that inverted comma under it (clearly distinguishable from a nuqta by the elongated head shape, as it is on the note (but it is tiny because the font size is tiny)). Here's an example of hazaar with the spelling I mean: https://lh3.ggpht.com/FXu7LY_Ki5uDcYTcOWwMSxAL0lC9ttGLbNZrrTUtD_qjzSZeMcNcP6gn2VMlpKNx9N0=w300 https://lh3.ggpht.com/FXu7LY_Ki5uDcYTcOWwMSxAL0lC9ttGLbNZrrT...
    - susam 10y ago
      "Two" appears as "दो" (do) in Hindi in the 2000 INR notes. This looks correct to me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2000_INR_Rev_2016.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2000_INR_Rev_2016.jpg (see the left edge of the note just below the string "2016"). If you are talking about "दोन" (don) appearing twice within the pink rectangular box, that's Konkani and Marathi, not Hindi. Two is indeed written as "दोन" (don) in Konkani and Marathi.
nitinreddy88 10y ago
Totally agree with you. I have read couple of BBC articles, they show same negativity
jetru 10y ago
Isn't this what's happening even in the US though? Look at the 2016 US election and how it was reported. Hardly impartial or rational. I mean where are the people cheering for Trump and their view points?
- jjawssd 10y ago
  Spot on. We need new media with more diverse viewpoints and more viewers for this new content. Why does every airport always have CNN on by default?
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - vermontdevil 10y ago
    I've long suspected CNN pays airports for this.
- orf 10y ago
  > Hardly impartial or rational. I mean where are the people cheering for Trump and their view points? In other highly impartial and irrational places, like breitbart, the_donald and other conservative media sources.
  - jetru 10y ago
    Fair enough :) I meant on television. I guess Fox News. And maybe I'm in the online echo chamber. It's really hard to tell.
    - zanny 10y ago
      Trumps facebook groups, twitter feeds, and the aforementioned subreddits around his campaign are non-stop pumping out Trump love. The Internet is only as much of an echo chamber as you let it be. You can always go look in those alternative forums.
mrkgnao 10y ago
I come from a lower-middle-class family in Kolkata, and I can say from experience that a lot of older people (my parents!) are over the moon with the whole thing. My mother, in particular, has suddenly turned into some sort of Modi fangirl, saying stuff like, "See what he's doing for the country!" (and variations on that). At some level, it's just the fact that anyone who replaces years of (perceived?) inaction with something striking -- however naive, or well-intentioned-albeit-disastrous-in-the-long-run -- will elicit this kind of reaction. I imagine for people like my parents, the cost of going to a bank and getting all their suddenly-demonetised banknotes exchanged (which we anyway had very little of) isn't too much. And when some restaurant, say, or a drugstore, is unwilling to accept one of the new 2000-rupee notes, we have credit/debit cards to fall back on. The fact that that people may not have Aadhaar[1] cards or voter ID cards stored safely somewhere, that not everyone has bank accounts which hold >99% (excuse the arbitrary figure) of the money they have, that not everyone has the ability to spend what might possibly be the better part of a day walking to $DEITY knows where the nearest bank is (probably to be turned away because they're out of cash or because the line is a kilometre too long) -- that the very act of going to a bank may not be as trivial or no-brainer-like to everyone as it is to oneself! -- is something we have to work very hard to even imagine. And the cash they have stored is, in many cases, all they have. (Remember what I said about not having a bank account?) Cash, for us, is what we use for bags of chips and ice-cream and sheets of graph paper and ... bus fare, I guess? Cash, to someone living from day to day, is everything. edit: yay downvotes, I can tick that off my list [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aadhaar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aadhaar
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- ordinarySeeker 10y ago
  There is atleast some indication that the Modi government took some steps in the prior years/months to strategically encircle the medium to big hoarders of black money and soothe the impact of the drastic demonetization step on the poor. Having said that any action of this magnitude is bound to have misplanning, unintended consequences and hardship 2013 Under previous government Replace subsidies with direct deposits in bank accounts of poor citizens[1] 2014 Under Modi Massive push to open bank accounts for poor people which seems to have bought banking to many households who never previously had one[2] 2015 Renegotiation of Tax treaties and Information sharing treating with tax heavens[3][4] Window for hoaders of black money to declare it for a flat penalty[5] 2016 Demonetization A more detailed step by step account http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/prime-minister-modi-surgical-strike-on-black-money-government-currency-revamp/1/805904.html http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/prime-minister-modi-surgi... [1] http://www.voanews.com/a/india-replaces-subsidies-for-the-poor-with-cash-transfers/1581898.html http://www.voanews.com/a/india-replaces-subsidies-for-the-po... [2] http://qz.com/257548/the-response-to-modi-governments-first-flagship-scheme-shows-it-couldnt-have-chosen-a-better-theme/ http://qz.com/257548/the-response-to-modi-governments-first-... [3]http://swarajyamag.com/economy/campaign-against-black-money-modi-govt-plugs-indo-mauritius-tax-treaty-loopholes http://swarajyamag.com/economy/campaign-against-black-money-... [4]http://pib.nic.in/newsite/PrintRelease.aspx?relid=146245 http://pib.nic.in/newsite/PrintRelease.aspx?relid=146245 [5] http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/10-things-to-know-about-blackmoney-bill/article7194290.ece http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/10-things-to-know-abou...
ajeet_dhaliwal 10y ago
The BBC is always like this. You should have seen the bias in the 2014 general elections, they did not want Narendra Modi to win and become the prime minister and they made that very clear in every article leading up to the election. He did end up winning. When India successfully sent a probe to Mars the BBC suggested the money could be better spent elsewhere. I would not rely on the BBC for India news, or even United States news for the matter. If you relied on the BBC for India news you wouldn't ever want to visit because you'd be afraid you would get raped as soon as you step out of the airport. In the case of the USA, you wouldn't even make it out of the airport, you would be shot dead at the baggage carousel. What annoys me most is I am forced by law to pay for such news reporting.
- dodgedcactii 10y ago
  Cool story bro.
andrewvijay 10y ago
They write like they know everything in the world but still they don't twist the facts. Also if some good was done they write like 'oh look these ex slaves have done this good' and if bad' oh look the poor bastards are adding just another bad thing to the list'. These are metaphors and they don't literally write this! And many neutral toned articles are mistaken as negative by nationalists here.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
dragonsh 10y ago
BBC is right in its analysis, this measure only targets 20% of Indian wealth. The richest 5% owning 80% of Indian wealth are at ease, only poor and middle class troubled. Moreover this 20% money will be available to them as cheap loans. The total money owed by big corporates in India is way bigger then this parallel black money. Also the person Rajan who was planning to reign this loans is forced out of office. Modi is Indian version of Donald trump building Great Wall across India against corruption in media. A normal Indian will never know that black money outside of India far outweigh anything in Indian homes.
- personinsg 10y ago
  I am not sure about BBC but now people know why Rajan previous RBI governor and govt has differences and he was forced out.
babyrainbow 10y ago
>My understanding is that India's new rules on the high denomination notes was intended to curtail corruption... How can this curtail corruption?
- ara24 10y ago
  It was primarily intended to bring out undeclared income and wipe out counterfeit notes. However, IMHO, undeclared income facilitates corruption.
manish_gill 10y ago
Rather than attacking the messenger and correlating it with the anecdotal evidence from the people you know, try to look at this objectively. - The white-collar middle class of course is lauding this move. Most of them (us) use digital money, are educated, want to see the corruption eradicated etc. - BUT, the majority of the population is poor, working class, not education enough. India is still a cash-based economy. Poor people have all their savings in either cash or gold. Women in India still hide money from their husbands. - Business - Real Estate, Transport, what have you, is still done in cash. Soon, the truckers who get paid in these denominations will stop getting paid, and stop bringing in food to the cities. What then? - A kid has already died because the private hospital refused to accept the currency. - There is talk going on about a possible Bank Run. - Most importantly, I firmly believe this was a political move to cripple his opponents in the upcoming elections in the heartland states of India. He's lost the last few state elections despite going to rallies himself. This is him tightening his grip on the power. - Now we know why Mr. Raghuram Rajan left the RBI and has gone back to U Chicago. - Edit: Oh yeah, the new note only contain one non-English script, devnagari. The language and culture wars that took 2 decades to resolve will begin anew. The privileged HN readers here who are like "I'll just order from Amazon" live in such a bubble that it's hilarious. This is the most brazen and irresponsible move that this govt has ever done. It's a draconian ruling that in the name of progress, is going to (already has) ruin the lives of the poor people of this country who have nothing to do with the daily corruption. The middle class will hail Mr. Modi as a visionary, drinking his kool-aid, click Purchase and go about its business. To call this a "temporary hiccup" is callous and frankly, disgusting.
- kranner 10y ago
  > Oh yeah, the new note only contain one non-English script, devnagari. Other scripts are on the back.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- abrbhat 10y ago
  Script-wise, it looks like the previous notes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2000_INR_Rev_2016.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2000_INR_Rev_2016.jpg
perseusprime11 10y ago
Actions against corruption are always tough. There is no easy way to get black money out. Short term it will hurt even common people but this will play out nicely in longer term.
alimbada 10y ago
If you follow the Palestine-Israel conflict to any degree you'll realise very quickly that BBC only ever reports on anything that's pro-Israel and never the other way.
mavelikara 10y ago
The move was _intially_ welcomed, but as the days went on massive flaws in execution became obvious. Hence people are upset. Source: I am an Indian living in the US who has immediate family living in India.

rwbt 10y ago

That might be true, but your Indian colleagues are probably well off with much of their transactions happening in plastic/electronic anyways, so this will have very little effect on their day to day lives. Since much of the Indian economy is cash based, there is a lot of frustration in the working class and there is a serious cash (as in bank notes) crunch.

nitinreddy88 10y ago
I do accept this fact. Is there better option? I am quite sure this decision was taken after discussing with lot of people who might have done PhDs in Economics and serving for Govt.
- meira 10y ago
  Not necessarily. It is never a good premise to expect good faith from politicians.
- rwbt 10y ago
  I don't know if there is a better option but the GoI definitely didn't think this throughly. Countries that demonetized in the past did this over a span of a time to prevent panic and fear. If the Govt set a deadline instead of abolishing them overnight that would go a lot smoother. Sure, that'll give 'some' tax evaders time to plan their 'exit' smoothly but it'll make lives of millions so much easier. Most likely, the evaders use that money to buy gold, so the Govt can temporarily track all gold purchases (they do it anyways for puchases over 2 lakh rupees). Even if they end up spending the cash on inflated real estate, they're in someways helping the economy instead of hoarding the cash and will end up in someone's bank account eventually. Also, all the big tax evaders rarely hoard cash. They usually have offshore accounts and sophisticated corporate structures. Secondly, the new notes being minted have no additional security features. The RBI confirmed that the new 500 and 2000 bank notes carry the same security features as the previous ones, which probably makes it similarly easy to counterfeit. The RBI previously claimed that it would take 5-6 years to design notes with new security features and I think they should've waited until they have better bank notes to curb fake notes.
- wav-part 10y ago
  > I am quite sure this decision was taken after discussing with lot of people who might have done PhDs in Economics and serving for Govt. I have no hope for this country to find such views on HN of all places. EDIT: I acknowledge this is low content comment. So I quote "the first job of an economist is to tell governments what they cannot do". Please sit back and give this a fair read [1]. [1] https://mises.org/about-mises/what-austrian-economics https://mises.org/about-mises/what-austrian-economics
- kamaal 10y ago
  >>I do accept this fact. Is there better option? Which fact do you not accept? Do you believe every person in India has a bank account? Every person has credit cards? Debit cards? Do you believe purchasing chain from production to end consumers has infrastructure for electronic transactions? Or that there is a way to make the economy run when close to 80% of the money is taken out of circulation? >>I am quite sure this decision was taken after discussing with lot of people who might have done PhDs in Economics and serving for Govt. That doesn't mean much when the results on the ground say the opposite.
  - swatkat 10y ago
    Well, due to Prime Minister's Jan Dhan Yojana scheme, a lot more people have bank accounts and debit cards now. Over 220 million bank accounts were opened since 2014. People who have those accounts can actually make use of them now.
    - kamaal 10y ago
      A lot more != All, let alone that. A lot more != Everybody-in-the-purchase-chain. Now it was a known fact that 80% of the currency will go out of rotation. Now regardless of whether you have an account, 80% of the money people use to trade is gone! Doesn't help if you have a account either. You don't have money to buy stuff. Your point is if(and that is a big 'if' given 80% is gone!) you have money you could deposit it. Not spend it.
      - swatkat 10y ago
        Well, I didn't actually say 'lot more == all'. I was just mentioning that PMJDY bank accounts and debit cards would ease things a bit for the people who have them, compared to the days when they had no bank accounts whatsoever (remember, PMJDY bank accounts are specially tailored for people with low income and/or unstructured income). Anyway, you don't need a bank account to exchange demonetized currency notes.
        kamaal 10y ago
- sufiyan 10y ago
  Nope. This decision seems to have happened at the whim of 3 people - the PM, the finance minister, the RBI governor. Clearly they didn't even proof read the notes. The back side of the 2k rupee notes is a mess. They screwed up the spelling of 2 in Hindi and 1000 in Urdu making it Bazaar from Hazaar
  - kranner 10y ago
    I can read Urdu and from what I can make out in images of the note, the Urdu text is fine. The font could have been better. The orthographic sign that makes the H in 'hazaar' is correct; the 'be' nuqta is a different shape. There should have been a hair-width's space after the 'dal' in 'do', but it is easily readable as 'dal' and not 'lam' as some people are claiming.
    - sufiyan 10y ago
      Yes. So, can I read Urdu and the hey looks like a bey. ب has the dot below it which you can clearly see in all images. ح doesn't have any dots beneath it.
      - kranner 10y ago
        Hazaar is spelt with a choti he which does have that inverted comma under it (clearly distinguishable from a nuqta by the elongated head shape, as it is on the note (but it is tiny because the font size is tiny)). Here's an example of hazaar with the spelling I mean: https://lh3.ggpht.com/FXu7LY_Ki5uDcYTcOWwMSxAL0lC9ttGLbNZrrTUtD_qjzSZeMcNcP6gn2VMlpKNx9N0=w300 https://lh3.ggpht.com/FXu7LY_Ki5uDcYTcOWwMSxAL0lC9ttGLbNZrrT...
  - susam 10y ago
    "Two" appears as "दो" (do) in Hindi in the 2000 INR notes. This looks correct to me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2000_INR_Rev_2016.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2000_INR_Rev_2016.jpg (see the left edge of the note just below the string "2016"). If you are talking about "दोन" (don) appearing twice within the pink rectangular box, that's Konkani and Marathi, not Hindi. Two is indeed written as "दोन" (don) in Konkani and Marathi.

nitinreddy88 10y ago

Totally agree with you. I have read couple of BBC articles, they show same negativity

jetru 10y ago

Isn't this what's happening even in the US though? Look at the 2016 US election and how it was reported. Hardly impartial or rational. I mean where are the people cheering for Trump and their view points?

jjawssd 10y ago
Spot on. We need new media with more diverse viewpoints and more viewers for this new content. Why does every airport always have CNN on by default?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- vermontdevil 10y ago
  I've long suspected CNN pays airports for this.
orf 10y ago
> Hardly impartial or rational. I mean where are the people cheering for Trump and their view points? In other highly impartial and irrational places, like breitbart, the_donald and other conservative media sources.
- jetru 10y ago
  Fair enough :) I meant on television. I guess Fox News. And maybe I'm in the online echo chamber. It's really hard to tell.
  - zanny 10y ago
    Trumps facebook groups, twitter feeds, and the aforementioned subreddits around his campaign are non-stop pumping out Trump love. The Internet is only as much of an echo chamber as you let it be. You can always go look in those alternative forums.

mrkgnao 10y ago

I come from a lower-middle-class family in Kolkata, and I can say from experience that a lot of older people (my parents!) are over the moon with the whole thing. My mother, in particular, has suddenly turned into some sort of Modi fangirl, saying stuff like, "See what he's doing for the country!" (and variations on that). At some level, it's just the fact that anyone who replaces years of (perceived?) inaction with something striking -- however naive, or well-intentioned-albeit-disastrous-in-the-long-run -- will elicit this kind of reaction. I imagine for people like my parents, the cost of going to a bank and getting all their suddenly-demonetised banknotes exchanged (which we anyway had very little of) isn't too much. And when some restaurant, say, or a drugstore, is unwilling to accept one of the new 2000-rupee notes, we have credit/debit cards to fall back on. The fact that that people may not have Aadhaar[1] cards or voter ID cards stored safely somewhere, that not everyone has bank accounts which hold >99% (excuse the arbitrary figure) of the money they have, that not everyone has the ability to spend what might possibly be the better part of a day walking to $DEITY knows where the nearest bank is (probably to be turned away because they're out of cash or because the line is a kilometre too long) -- that the very act of going to a bank may not be as trivial or no-brainer-like to everyone as it is to oneself! -- is something we have to work very hard to even imagine. And the cash they have stored is, in many cases, all they have. (Remember what I said about not having a bank account?) Cash, for us, is what we use for bags of chips and ice-cream and sheets of graph paper and ... bus fare, I guess? Cash, to someone living from day to day, is everything. edit: yay downvotes, I can tick that off my list [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aadhaar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aadhaar

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
ordinarySeeker 10y ago
There is atleast some indication that the Modi government took some steps in the prior years/months to strategically encircle the medium to big hoarders of black money and soothe the impact of the drastic demonetization step on the poor. Having said that any action of this magnitude is bound to have misplanning, unintended consequences and hardship 2013 Under previous government Replace subsidies with direct deposits in bank accounts of poor citizens[1] 2014 Under Modi Massive push to open bank accounts for poor people which seems to have bought banking to many households who never previously had one[2] 2015 Renegotiation of Tax treaties and Information sharing treating with tax heavens[3][4] Window for hoaders of black money to declare it for a flat penalty[5] 2016 Demonetization A more detailed step by step account http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/prime-minister-modi-surgical-strike-on-black-money-government-currency-revamp/1/805904.html http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/prime-minister-modi-surgi... [1] http://www.voanews.com/a/india-replaces-subsidies-for-the-poor-with-cash-transfers/1581898.html http://www.voanews.com/a/india-replaces-subsidies-for-the-po... [2] http://qz.com/257548/the-response-to-modi-governments-first-flagship-scheme-shows-it-couldnt-have-chosen-a-better-theme/ http://qz.com/257548/the-response-to-modi-governments-first-... [3]http://swarajyamag.com/economy/campaign-against-black-money-modi-govt-plugs-indo-mauritius-tax-treaty-loopholes http://swarajyamag.com/economy/campaign-against-black-money-... [4]http://pib.nic.in/newsite/PrintRelease.aspx?relid=146245 http://pib.nic.in/newsite/PrintRelease.aspx?relid=146245 [5] http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/10-things-to-know-about-blackmoney-bill/article7194290.ece http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/10-things-to-know-abou...

ajeet_dhaliwal 10y ago

The BBC is always like this. You should have seen the bias in the 2014 general elections, they did not want Narendra Modi to win and become the prime minister and they made that very clear in every article leading up to the election. He did end up winning. When India successfully sent a probe to Mars the BBC suggested the money could be better spent elsewhere. I would not rely on the BBC for India news, or even United States news for the matter. If you relied on the BBC for India news you wouldn't ever want to visit because you'd be afraid you would get raped as soon as you step out of the airport. In the case of the USA, you wouldn't even make it out of the airport, you would be shot dead at the baggage carousel. What annoys me most is I am forced by law to pay for such news reporting.

dodgedcactii 10y ago
Cool story bro.

andrewvijay 10y ago

They write like they know everything in the world but still they don't twist the facts. Also if some good was done they write like 'oh look these ex slaves have done this good' and if bad' oh look the poor bastards are adding just another bad thing to the list'. These are metaphors and they don't literally write this! And many neutral toned articles are mistaken as negative by nationalists here.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

dragonsh 10y ago

BBC is right in its analysis, this measure only targets 20% of Indian wealth. The richest 5% owning 80% of Indian wealth are at ease, only poor and middle class troubled. Moreover this 20% money will be available to them as cheap loans. The total money owed by big corporates in India is way bigger then this parallel black money. Also the person Rajan who was planning to reign this loans is forced out of office. Modi is Indian version of Donald trump building Great Wall across India against corruption in media. A normal Indian will never know that black money outside of India far outweigh anything in Indian homes.

personinsg 10y ago
I am not sure about BBC but now people know why Rajan previous RBI governor and govt has differences and he was forced out.

babyrainbow 10y ago

>My understanding is that India's new rules on the high denomination notes was intended to curtail corruption... How can this curtail corruption?

ara24 10y ago
It was primarily intended to bring out undeclared income and wipe out counterfeit notes. However, IMHO, undeclared income facilitates corruption.

manish_gill 10y ago

Rather than attacking the messenger and correlating it with the anecdotal evidence from the people you know, try to look at this objectively. - The white-collar middle class of course is lauding this move. Most of them (us) use digital money, are educated, want to see the corruption eradicated etc. - BUT, the majority of the population is poor, working class, not education enough. India is still a cash-based economy. Poor people have all their savings in either cash or gold. Women in India still hide money from their husbands. - Business - Real Estate, Transport, what have you, is still done in cash. Soon, the truckers who get paid in these denominations will stop getting paid, and stop bringing in food to the cities. What then? - A kid has already died because the private hospital refused to accept the currency. - There is talk going on about a possible Bank Run. - Most importantly, I firmly believe this was a political move to cripple his opponents in the upcoming elections in the heartland states of India. He's lost the last few state elections despite going to rallies himself. This is him tightening his grip on the power. - Now we know why Mr. Raghuram Rajan left the RBI and has gone back to U Chicago. - Edit: Oh yeah, the new note only contain one non-English script, devnagari. The language and culture wars that took 2 decades to resolve will begin anew. The privileged HN readers here who are like "I'll just order from Amazon" live in such a bubble that it's hilarious. This is the most brazen and irresponsible move that this govt has ever done. It's a draconian ruling that in the name of progress, is going to (already has) ruin the lives of the poor people of this country who have nothing to do with the daily corruption. The middle class will hail Mr. Modi as a visionary, drinking his kool-aid, click Purchase and go about its business. To call this a "temporary hiccup" is callous and frankly, disgusting.

kranner 10y ago
> Oh yeah, the new note only contain one non-English script, devnagari. Other scripts are on the back.
deleted 10y ago
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abrbhat 10y ago
Script-wise, it looks like the previous notes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2000_INR_Rev_2016.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2000_INR_Rev_2016.jpg

perseusprime11 10y ago

Actions against corruption are always tough. There is no easy way to get black money out. Short term it will hurt even common people but this will play out nicely in longer term.

alimbada 10y ago

If you follow the Palestine-Israel conflict to any degree you'll realise very quickly that BBC only ever reports on anything that's pro-Israel and never the other way.

mavelikara 10y ago

The move was _intially_ welcomed, but as the days went on massive flaws in execution became obvious. Hence people are upset. Source: I am an Indian living in the US who has immediate family living in India.