Did Modi's New Year's Eve speech - a flop speech to climax a flop year - mark the End of the Beginning or the Beginning of the End? Mamata Banerjee had the answer. She tweeted: "End of Demonetization. Start of DeModitization"!
Modi's lost his oratorical touch: all sound, no substance - probably because he is waking up to the reality that his soaring rhetoric is fast losing credibility. Mamata again: "Empty vessels make the most noise", topped by the Shiv Sena mouthpiece Saamana: "old
dhokla in fresh
chutney"; alternatively: "stale
bhaji fried in oil again". Saamana's
punch line: "He simply thanked all those who stood in long queues and died, and shook an umbrella full of promises on their heads".
The widespread expectation was that the Prime Minister would provide the nation a full assessment of his demonetization drive, explain why 50 days has proved totally inadequate to restore normalcy, and set a target date by which the economy would be back on the rails. He ducked all these questions - probably because he has no answers. We are adrift, with no motor, no sails, no oars, no rudder, no compass, no map. What a New Year's gift to give the "125 crore
deshvasiyon, mitron, bhaiyon aur behnon" that constitute his staple invocation (as if we don't know how to count!)
So how much currency has he collected - and how much of it is black? He dared not say. For indications are that where he expected several lakh crore to be held back for him to claim as "black money", most informed estimates are that virtually all the old notes in circulation are back in bank vaults awaiting replacement. And banks are overburdened with unwanted money ("India's banking system has never before received a such a large amount of money in such a short time": Modi's boast) - unwanted because banks have to pay interest on these unsolicited deposits, while waiting for the RBI to furnish new currency to replace old currency, at which point all they have found deposited will transmogrify into a flood of outflows, plunging the banking system into yet another crisis! (Who is this guy's economic adviser?)
Have deposits burgeoned to this unprecedented level because there is little or no "black" in circulation? No, not at all. Black is there - but not in cash, for "black" is quickly converted from cash into tangible assets like gold, jewellery, art treasures, race horses, casino binges, escort agencies and real estate, besides being salted away in massive quantities in foreign financial sanctuaries before being "round-tripped' to India through Mauritius in the shape of anonymous Participatory Notes. For years, the tax authorities have been assessing hidden incomes in cash at about 5-6% of total "black money". Either Modi never asked or did not listen when told. So, if Modi's demonetization has so signally failed to find treasure troves of "black", that is only because cash was always the wrong target for undertaking a "surgical strike" on "black money".
If a "surgical strike" were what he was looking for, Modi could have just turned off the Mauritius spigot. But that would have badly hurt the principal financiers of political parties, including, of course, the BJP. Hence that golden bypass was left open even as the Modi government proclaimed that they had done what no Congress government had dared to do - renegotiate the avoidance of double taxation treaty with Mauritius while leaving Participatory Notes untouched. Thus, Modi's demonetization drive has been an elaborate feint to distract attention from the really hard measures needed to frontally attack black money held in non-cash assets or stashed abroad. Instead, the people at large - the
"mitron" and
"deshvasiyon" - have been fooled into believing that they were the foot-soldiers in the Great Patriotic War against Black Money.
For 50 days, that lie worked black magic - but has not unearthed black money. Now the foot-soldiers are asking where is the black and who are the plutocrats and politicians being marched off to Tihar at least, if not the gallows. And as the truth slowly dawns on them that they have been duped while being put to untold privation, they will turn on Modi and his cohort. That should happen by the time the February-March polls come along and Modi's 50 days stretch to 100 and more with no end in sight. I know pollsters are predicting a Modi victory in UP. But their sample surveys were undertaken when Modi's Great Illusion had ensnared the nation in its
maya ka jaal. Now with the veil of untruth lifting, vengeance awaits the perpetrators.
Anticipating this, Modi thought he could buy off the disillusioned with a huge New Year's bonanza timed beautifully to coincide with the announcement of the dates of the scheduled state assembly elections. Alas for Modi, because demonetization has ended with the flow back of almost all the banned currency in circulation, there is no significant reduction in RBI liabilities and, therefore, no great financial bonanza awaiting the government. Hence the pathetic spectacle of Modi holding out a few trinkets and baubles to appease an increasingly restive public. The additional subventions announced for urban housing are laughable when one sees that as against the target of providing 20 million housing units in urban India, only 19,000 were built in the first year (2015-16), although approval was given for 70,000, and a mere
7,000 households have availed of the credit-linked subsidy component of the scheme. As for Rs 6,000 to every pregnant woman, this scheme goes back to 2010 when it was called the Indira Gandhi Matrutva Sahyog Yojana, then abducted and repackaged by Modi as the Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana - and even PMAY is two years old. The milk has curdled. Modi could think of nothing new - because he has no money from
notebandi to play Robin Hood, robbing the rich to pay the poor. All he has achieved is to deprive his Finance Minister of the opportunity of embellishing his budget speech with these announcements. Poor Jaitley. He really does emerge from this theatre of the absurd as Modi's Sancho Panza jousting with the windmills.
What remains? The exhortation to "all political parties and leaders to come together...to free politics of black money and corruption."
Wah-Wah! Then why has the BJP not taken the lead? Why not confess to all the black money that Modi & Co. (CEO: Amit Shah) and other politicians have gathered over the years and pledge to never commit this sin again? Let other sinners follow his example. That is what Mahatma Gandhi would have done since he really believed and acted on the Modi dictum: "Firmness in truth is a guarantee for success". Why does Modi not set the example of taking "the path towards truth that Mahatma Gandhi showed us", especially as Modi added, "let us resolve to follow his message of truth and goodness"? Why don't you be the first to take that giant leap, man? Is it because Modi the
Pracharak and Modi the Prime Minister are two different persona?
(Mani Shankar Aiyar is former Congress MP, Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha.)Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this article are the personal opinions of the author. The facts and opinions appearing in the article do not reflect the views of NDTV and NDTV does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.