Prime Minister Narendra Modi has once again shown that he is a man with the courage of conviction. Since Prime Minister Indira Gandhi ordered Field Marshal S.H.F.J. Manekshaw to corral the genocidal Pakistan army in Bangladesh in 1971 and two years earlier, nationalised all banks having deposits of over Rs 50 crore, no Prime Minister has taken a step with such far reaching consequences as the PM’s announcement on withdrawal of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes within four hours. If we consider that more than Rs 850,000 crore of rupees have been sucked out of the economy by the Prime Minister at the stroke of midnight on 8 November 2016, it is clear that every citizen of India will get impacted by the move and not simply holders of unaccounted cash. Mr Narendra Modi has in effect called on his countrymen and countrywomen to abandon the informal economy and flock to the formal “within fifty days”. This is a superhuman task on a scale never seen before in human history. Changing human habits is hard at the best of times, and freeing the citizen from his or her addiction to cash within the short period called for by the Prime Minister is without doubt a massive task, but clearly such that Mr Modi believes is possible because of the improvement in quality of governance caused by his ascension as Head of Government on 26 May 2014. Not only is the Prime Minister confident of his own capacities, he is equally so of the government machinery, else he would not have handed over to it the responsibility for ensuring that the unprecedented scale of currency withdrawal by Government of India be smoothly carried out. In weeks, the country will know whether such confidence in what has always been an under par bureaucratic machine, is justified. Should the Prime Minister succeed in his ultra bold expectations, his party will reap the harvest in Assembly and Parliamentary seats for elections to come.
Prime Minister Modi, with tears in his eyes, has told the people of India about his vision of a country freed from the cancer of corruption. Certainly, this is a noble objective. Certainly, the family of the Prime Minister has derived zero benefit from having such an illustrious son in its midst. Whether as Chief Minister or as Prime Minister, the immediate family of Mr Modi has not derived any benefit from such propinquity. This is certainly a laudable feat in a country where nepotism is endemic and indeed seemingly incurable. The visuals of the Prime Minister’s aged mother standing patiently in a queue to exchange the few old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes in her possession for new is never to be forgotten, and is a rebuke to those political families that have become hyper wealthy through the influence of those of their relatives who are or were in high positions. Prime Minister Modi’s mother merits the respect of the nation for never once seeking to take advantage of the high positions occupied by her beloved son, who is unable to spend as much time with her as both would like, because of the extreme pressure of work each day on Prime Minister Modi. Given the humble situation of his family and the suffering they are going through relative to the millionaires and billionaires of India’s political class in general, it is no surprise that Prime Minister Modi is willing to serve “kadak chai” to the people. Plainly, a man who has himself spent most of his life in hardship, believes that his countrymen and countrywomen would be ready and indeed eager to undergo some discomfort and discomfiture in order to, as the Prime Minister says, cleanse the nation of black money. This publication hopes that the government machinery will prove equal to the nation-building and nation-cleansing task set by Prime Minister Modi, and that the disruption caused by the lightning withdrawal of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes will cease with new notes replacing the old much before the 30 December deadline set by the Prime Minister.