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India raises withdrawal limit as rupee anger mounts

bbc.com

21–30 of 119 posts

Re: India raises withdrawal limit as rupee anger mounts

#21
post #6

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…

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?

Those Trump supporters exist, I'm sure. I've never met any of them in California, though. I assume the media has the same problem.

Re: India raises withdrawal limit as rupee anger mounts

#22
Ahh, it's the BBC.

I think we have reached a point in journalism where it has now become important to identify who is reporting it as well. At this rate we will need a simple content bias/color code plugin for different sites.

As an Indian, I have found that the BBC has been overly pessimistic about India especially on the web. Their story selections, headlines, and the voices listed as sound bites in the stories support the "downplay theme" for India.

Re: India raises withdrawal limit as rupee anger mounts

#23
post #8
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> 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.

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.

Re: India raises withdrawal limit as rupee anger mounts

#24
post #18

What's interesting is that Bollywood stars whose names were in the Panama Papers are lauding this 'demonitisation' move... it kinda underscores that real 'black money' isn't stuffed in mattresses, it's stored more cleverly in different types of assets, companies, offshore accounts. Raghuram Rajan, former Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, had this to say a couple years ago about the idea: “Unfortunately, my sense…

  What's interesting is that Bollywood stars whose names were in
  the Panama Papers are lauding this 'demonitisation' move...
Those Bollywood stars are the ones who (1) own huge stretches of agricultural land posing as farmers, (2) own benami properties.

Perhaps publicly supporting anything a ruling government says is their way to demonstrate support towards the government and avoid any scrutiny.

Re: India raises withdrawal limit as rupee anger mounts

#25
post #16

I am amazed the amount of selfishness we exhibit. If I am unable to pick up groceries for the lack of cash, I can surely choose to order it online (using a credit/debt card). A vast majority of Indians cannot. A majority of Indians don't have access to banks either. They will be forced to exchange their now illegal currency with the help of agents who would charge them 50 to 60%. Most of the ATMs are out of cash. The…

> A majority of Indians don't have access to banks either.

Forget banks, many don't have ID. Ration cards exist, but those are tied to your household so you may not easily be able to get access to your ration card (say if you're in a city with family -- and ration card -- back home). In case of estranged women it's even hader.

Without ID they can't exchange larger amounts. It's also hard to create a new bank account on short notice without this.

My mother once helped a young woman set up a bank account. She had come to Mumbai to find work, and used to live at her aunt's place, and her aunt would hold her money for her (but skim off it). Most such people keep their savings in cash someplace "safe", though some use post office accounts. Anyway, the process was arduous. Her name was garbled on her family's ration card, and they needed the original, which was back at the village. This took forever to sort out.

This is going to be hard to work through for a few. Especially those with lower income who keep most of their life savings in cash.

Re: India raises withdrawal limit as rupee anger mounts

#26

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…

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.

Re: India raises withdrawal limit as rupee anger mounts

#28
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

>>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.

Re: India raises withdrawal limit as rupee anger mounts

#29

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…

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.
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