By Kunal Basu:
The sudden move by the Government of India to curb free-flowing black money is bound to have negative repercussions on illegal financial trade. Although it has been severely criticised for taking many unawares, yet it has struck a bad blow to illegal black marketeers and proponents of the parallel money trade in India.
Over the years, there has been a lot of black money seeping into the Indian financial system. As a consequential result, the economy has suffered greatly. Not only does black money substantially widen the margin between the rich and the poor, but the same also results in huge ill-gotten amounts of stashed wealth by the rich and powerful elitist class that think themselves to be outside the reach of law. This is more so a problem, particularly in India, wherein many an unscrupulous businessmen and crafty politicians have stashed their black money in untouchable Swiss bank accounts. Black money-mongers must be basking in the absence of a recovery treaty by both governments. But with this demonitisation move, it is time someone cooked their goose really tightly.
This brilliant move by our Government is bound to have negative repercussions on the illegal flourishing hawala trade in India. It is an exemplary laudable step taken to fight corruption and end illegal money from flooding the Indian economy. The only other time this feasible dream became a stark reality was in 1978 with positive results.
As a lawyer, I wholly agree that this sudden move by our Government is truly a beneficial one in the annuls of the Indian economy. No doubt it has caused a lot of trouble to people, many of whom have to stand outside in long queues for converting useless Rs. 500 notes for 100 ones. There ought to have been separate counters to facilitate the queues of people thronging outside the bank.
But equally, the dangers of publicly announcing such a vast reformative measure by the authorities could well see proponents of illegally amassed black money taking countermeasures to bring them outside the purview of Indian statute law. By exchanging defunct Rs. 500 and Rs. 1000 rupee notes for currency denominations of a differential economical value, the same is a very good measure taken by the government to curb dangerous money laundering in the Indian financial setup.