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India raises withdrawal limit as rupee anger mounts

bbc.com

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Re: India raises withdrawal limit as rupee anger mounts

#71

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…

Rather than attacking the messenger and correlating it with the anecdotal evidence from the people you know, try to look at this objectively.

- The white-collar middle class of course is lauding this move. Most of them (us) use digital money, are educated, want to see the corruption eradicated etc.

- BUT, the majority of the population is poor, working class, not education enough. India is still a cash-based economy. Poor people have all their savings in either cash or gold. Women in India still hide money from their husbands.

- Business - Real Estate, Transport, what have you, is still done in cash. Soon, the truckers who get paid in these denominations will stop getting paid, and stop bringing in food to the cities. What then?

- A kid has already died because the private hospital refused to accept the currency.

- There is talk going on about a possible Bank Run.

- Most importantly, I firmly believe this was a political move to cripple his opponents in the upcoming elections in the heartland states of India. He's lost the last few state elections despite going to rallies himself. This is him tightening his grip on the power.

- Now we know why Mr. Raghuram Rajan left the RBI and has gone back to U Chicago.

- Edit: Oh yeah, the new note only contain one non-English script, devnagari. The language and culture wars that took 2 decades to resolve will begin anew.

The privileged HN readers here who are like "I'll just order from Amazon" live in such a bubble that it's hilarious. This is the most brazen and irresponsible move that this govt has ever done. It's a draconian ruling that in the name of progress, is going to (already has) ruin the lives of the poor people of this country who have nothing to do with the daily corruption.

The middle class will hail Mr. Modi as a visionary, drinking his kool-aid, click Purchase and go about its business. To call this a "temporary hiccup" is callous and frankly, disgusting.

Re: India raises withdrawal limit as rupee anger mounts

#72
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then again, by definition those are not the people who are hurt the worst, because they have bank accounts.

You don't need a bank account to exchange demonetized currency notes.

You need ID, though. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12947147

You need a bank account for this process to be convenient and easy. Without it you have to exchange in bits and pieces.

Re: India raises withdrawal limit as rupee anger mounts

#73
post #10

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…

I come from a lower-middle-class family in Kolkata, and I can say from experience that a lot of older people (my parents!) are over the moon with the whole thing. My mother, in particular, has suddenly turned into some sort of Modi fangirl, saying stuff like, "See what he's doing for the country!" (and variations on that). At some level, it's just the fact that anyone who replaces years of (perceived?) inaction with…

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Re: India raises withdrawal limit as rupee anger mounts

#75
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You, a single person, not meeting a single Trump supporter may not be surprising. You may tend to meet only like-minded people. But the media is/must be a different animal: they should spend time trying to gauze the social moods from different strata of the society. But in USA, it seems most of the mainstream media is serving to Saudi funded Democrats [1]. So there is no news critical of Clinton, nor Islamic ideology…

If one group promotes eating dirt and tree bark and another proposes we dine on sandwiches you may unsurprisingly find that the media promotes one message more often than the other.

Re: India raises withdrawal limit as rupee anger mounts

#76
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You, a single person, not meeting a single Trump supporter may not be surprising. You may tend to meet only like-minded people. But the media is/must be a different animal: they should spend time trying to gauze the social moods from different strata of the society. But in USA, it seems most of the mainstream media is serving to Saudi funded Democrats [1]. So there is no news critical of Clinton, nor Islamic ideology…

The fact that the clinton foundation took Saudi money is an issue but hardly germane to any current discussion and link you provided was of extremely low quality and contained disreputable nonsense like the theory that Obama is a cryto muslim.

It would be great if you wouldn't pollute hacker news with this.

Re: India raises withdrawal limit as rupee anger mounts

#77
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nope. This decision seems to have happened at the whim of 3 people - the PM, the finance minister, the RBI governor. Clearly they didn't even proof read the notes. The back side of the 2k rupee notes is a mess. They screwed up the spelling of 2 in Hindi and 1000 in Urdu making it Bazaar from Hazaar

I can read Urdu and from what I can make out in images of the note, the Urdu text is fine. The font could have been better. The orthographic sign that makes the H in 'hazaar' is correct; the 'be' nuqta is a different shape. There should have been a hair-width's space after the 'dal' in 'do', but it is easily readable as 'dal' and not 'lam' as some people are claiming.

Re: India raises withdrawal limit as rupee anger mounts

#78

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…

BBC is right in its analysis, this measure only targets 20% of Indian wealth. The richest 5% owning 80% of Indian wealth are at ease, only poor and middle class troubled. Moreover this 20% money will be available to them as cheap loans. The total money owed by big corporates in India is way bigger then this parallel black money. Also the person Rajan who was planning to reign this loans is forced out of office.

Modi is Indian version of Donald trump building Great Wall across India against corruption in media.

A normal Indian will never know that black money outside of India far outweigh anything in Indian homes.

Re: India raises withdrawal limit as rupee anger mounts

#79

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…

Rather than attacking the messenger and correlating it with the anecdotal evidence from the people you know, try to look at this objectively. - The white-collar middle class of course is lauding this move. Most of them (us) use digital money, are educated, want to see the corruption eradicated etc. - BUT, the majority of the population is poor, working class, not education enough. India is still a cash-based economy.…

> Oh yeah, the new note only contain one non-English script, devnagari.

Other scripts are on the back.

Re: India raises withdrawal limit as rupee anger mounts

#80

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…

Rather than attacking the messenger and correlating it with the anecdotal evidence from the people you know, try to look at this objectively. - The white-collar middle class of course is lauding this move. Most of them (us) use digital money, are educated, want to see the corruption eradicated etc. - BUT, the majority of the population is poor, working class, not education enough. India is still a cash-based economy.…

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