Modi’s demonetisation has not made even a minor dent in reducing black money and corruption. The whole exercise has been to exhibit misplaced bravado and hide adverse facts and promote those that seek to extol demonetisation. To give you an example NHAI has estimated that it will have to pay Rs. 922 crores to private toll booth operators across the country to compensate them for exempting payment of tolls by highway users in the period from the afternoon of 9th Nov to midnight of 2nd Dec. Similarly the operators who fill ATM’s with cash are likely to send a bill in excess of Rs. 400 crores to the government for the loss in their operations because firstly, they are not being given enough cash to fill ATM’s which activity has dropped from an average per ATM of Rs. 7 lakhs/day to Rs. 1.5 lakhs/day and secondly, most of these operators keep the ATM’s functioning on a fee per transaction which has drastically dropped since the number of hours of ATM working has been drastically reduced and non-functional ATM’s far exceed the ones that are working. Thus if you take just the Rs. 922 crores the NHAI has to shell out, it is far in excess of the aggregate total of all seizures made since Nov 8th of cash, both demonetised and new, gold, jewellery and what-have-you. The seizures made through raids etc. are puny and are nowhere near the estimated size of actual black money in the country. The continuous news in the media about seizures is only a publicity stunt to show that the demonetisation has actually worked.
Demonetisation was an excellent tool to get at the cash component of black money which Modi & his team muffed up as we have seen in the last 50 days. But the amount of black money kept in cash is hardly 10-15% of the total. Thus Modi has to go after the other ways that black money is kept. Black money in benami properties be it land or otherwise is another method which Modi says he is going to tackle next. And one is sure that his further target should be in bringing back the black money abroad. Modi was to bring back the black money from abroad particularly Swiss banks within 100 days of assuming office but now with more than 800 days having passed there is nothing in sight. To cover up on his lapse or inability to bring black money from abroad Modi embarked on his short-sighted binge of demonetisation which has brought day to day lives in homes and businesses, in fact every sphere of economic activity across the country to a near halt.
To fight black money apart from benami properties Modi has to show the will to tackle election funding by political parties. This is a major area where black money is deployed. In fact all political parties needs to be brought under the ambit of the CAG and their accounts compulsorily audited every year, failing which the Election Commission should de-register them.
As for the fight against corruption Modi needs to have the courage to attack two principal groups – politicians and government employees. Between these two groups more than half the corruption in India is accounted for. For politicians based on their asset filing with the Election Commission, IT assessments should be done to see whether their income matches their assets growth which irrespective of party affiliation has been growing astronomically each time they file a new asset form with the EC. When there is this very visible class of people who have been accumulating ill-gotten wealth staring Modi in the face one wonders why he is going after looking under each carpet to unearth black money hoarders? The question is will Modi have the guts to fight his own breed?
As for government employees where corruption is a way of life for the majority and nothing really moves without the lubricant of money, Modi should show the will to target them. Modi started with a lion’s roar about making government employees work upon taking over in 2014 but over the 2 years since in 2016, we have found his approach to this class has been that of a mewing cat. What needs to be done is that Modi should withdraw the 7th Pay Commission already in place and implement a ‘pay for work’ salary system based on an incentive scheme. Set the base salaries of government employees at the levels prior to the 7th Pay Commission and let them earn the raises of the new scales as an incentive for better productivity. The Niti Aayog can work out the productivity norms for all classes of government employees which will be at least some ‘productive’ work that they would have done. The shock of demonetisation where some of their hoards would have been evaporated and the productivity based salary system should encourage the government employees to put their noses down into their work or in contrarian terms at the least get involved in finding ways to beat the new system.
Unless we do the above there is no future for this country and we will be turning the pages of the book of the saga of black money and corruption over and over again.
