http://www.business-standard.com/…/two-men-robbed-off-in-ba…

What makes our country’s stand behind the demonetisation chaos?

http://www.countercurrents.org/…/i-am-in-queue-i-am-not-a-…/

The common people have been reduced to a set of criminals.

http://www.countercurrents.org/…/humansofdemonetisedindia-…/

My name is Vanaja. I am a 46 year old domestic help.

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/…/demonetisation…/1/817805.html

Note ban: Mayawati urges President to ask Modi to solve problems faced by people

BSP chief Mayawati urged President Pranab Mukherjee to summon Prime
Minister Narendra Modi and ask him to take measures to solve the
problems faced by the people due to demonetisation.

http://www.frontline.in/…/a-nation-in-a…/article9414978.ece…

A nation in agony

Murderer of democratic institutions (Modi)’s “surgical strike on black
money” through demonetisation tears asunder the lives of vast sections
of the poor, promoting a gigantic transfer of income and wealth from the
poor to the rich on a scale unprecedented since Independence. By V.
SRIDHAR

For most of November, millions of pwople stood in queues
of Modi’s QUEUE INDIA MOVEMENT outside banks and ATMs across the
country, patiently waiting to collect a fraction of what was
legitimately theirs. December came and nothing changed. Considering the
scale on which an entire population remained literally on its feet,
which also resulted in nearly 100 deaths as is being reported from
across the country, what was truly remarkable was the fact that a nation
chose to remain sullen instead of turning angry or violent.

As
the country lurches into the second month of its tryst with
demonetisation, it has quickly become evident that this is an
unprecedented onslaught on the poor. The country has never faced an
economic crisis of the kind it is undergoing now and there is no
historic precedent to learn from, from anywhere in the world. Reports
from across the country—corroborated by an array of reports from
Frontline correspondents, from almost a dozen States—show that the
foolhardy and reckless economic experiment has wrought havoc on lives
and livelihoods in ways that could not have been even imagined.

Modi’s cunning, crooked and cynical use of the image of a beggar with a
swipe machine to conjure country’s march to a mythical land of a
cashless society reflects a mindset that has only contempt for the poor.
The simple point is that a man who cunningly claimed and bluffed as an
OBC ( in reality belongs to Gandhi’s Ganchi caste) and to have once
been a chaiwala himself at an earlier point in life is just heaping
insults on those whose small-scale livelihoods revolve around the
fulcrum of cash.

But this is not even just about those at the
extreme margins, such as vegetable vendors and people running tea shops
or eateries in the country’s villages, towns and cities. Farmers, for
whom cash is critical, especially now in the sowing season, have been
left to the wolves. With the RBI banning cooperatives from conducting
any operations, in utter violation of their legal status as “banking
companies”, small and marginal farmers have either sacrificed profits
from the last harvest or have abandoned or neglected their next crop.

There is a good reason why this is the “wedding season” in the
country’s calendar: this is the time when harvests bring some incomes
to households. But with cash withdrawals limited to a trickle, reports
of abandoned weddings, or at the very least, of tears in the time of joy
from families across the country, have poured in. Waves of reports,
about small-scale factories in small towns such as Ghaziabad, not far
from the national capital, Moradabad (brassware), Tirupur (hosiery),
Ludhiana (bicycles, winter wear and sports goods), Firozabad (glassware)
and Mandya in Karnataka (jaggery), portray a calamity that is still
only beginning to roll. Never before have entire swathes of economic
activity been brought to the brink of extinction as now.

In the
immediate aftermath of Modi’s announcement of demonetisation, it became
clear that a bungling of monumental proportions, right at the nation’s
helm, was responsible for the country’s plight. But now, in the light of
the manner in which the government has shifted goalposts and added new
“objectives” to the agenda, such as the one of a move towards a cashless
society, suggest that ineptitude may be only a more charitable
explanation for the tribulations heaped on a hapless people. One must
move away from a mindset of pity for the forsaken to comprehend the
scale of wealth transfers that demonetisation has engendered. This is
more about aggressively promoting inequality on a scale that even the
wealthiest of the land could not have imagined.

Blundering troika

The blundering troika of Modi, Arun Jaitley and RBI Governor Urjit
Patel, must take ultimate responsibility for the myriad ways in which
havoc has been caused, and is still unfolding. To be fair to Modi, he
has never shied from taking responsibility for what clearly bears his
imprint. Jaitley’s role in this arises from the fact that it is in his
name, and under his command, that demonetisation has been rolled out. As
for Patel, the man responsible for currency management and much more,
his profound silence since November 8 has explained more than he ever
could have. After all, Patel headed the Monetary Policy Department in
the RBI, which deals with currency management, as Deputy Governor before
he assumed his current position. It is simply impossible that the RBI,
which filters talent after a gruelling exam (recruiting less than
hundred officers annually from about three lakh candidates), did not
have within it the elementary skills needed for currency management.

But first, the bungling. As was pointed out in the last issue of
Frontline, a colossal failure to print enough of the currency worth the
value of what it was supposed to replace is directly responsible for the
unending queues at ATMs and banks across the country. This has resulted
in the ultimate insult to the Indian rupee. The acute shortage of
currency and its arbitrary rationing, not only in geographic terms—rural
versus urban—but in terms of which banks (and within banks, which
branches) get how much, has reduced the rupee’s status to just being
another commodity. This has been aggravated by the fact that almost a
month after Modi’s announcement most people have not yet seen the new
500-rupee note, which accounted for almost half the value of currency in
circulation and was the fulcrum of the Indian currency system. The new
2,000-rupee is one that nobody wants—not even the driver of the cash van
of a bank in Bangalore who escaped with Rs.1.37 crore but chose to
abandon more than Rs.44 lakh worth of these brand new crisp notes.

Slowly, because of the utter lack of transparency, information filtered
in of the gross bungling of jaitly, which directly controls the
presses at Nashik (in Maharashtra) and Dewas (in Madhya Pradesh), which
were responsible for printing the new 500-rupee notes. These presses
were unequal to the task of meeting the huge challenge of replacing the
17.165 billion 500-rupee notes that were extinguished on the midnight of
November 8. As reports of glaring errors in the new notes came in, the
government was forced to shift production to the RBI-owned presses at
Mysuru (Karnataka) and Salboni (West Bengal). The fact that the
government-owned Security Printing and Minting Corporation of India Ltd.
(SPMCIL), whose printing equipment is of much older vintage compared
with the RBI’s units, does not even have a full-time managing director
at this crucial hour indicates the utter lack of preparedness in the
Finance Ministry and its inability to coordinate currency printing with
the Central bank. This blundering is compounded by the fact that while
printing of the 2,000-rupee note apparently began soon after Raghuram
Rajan’s exit from the RBI in early September, printing of the new
500-rupee note began much later. The acute shortage of currency,
especially those of lower denominations, is what is being reflected in
people queueing up at banks and ATMs across the country. But the
scarcity of money in its most elementary form is not having the same
impact on everyone. Those with the means, such as people with multiple
ATM cards, for instance, are able to get much more than those who are
lucky enough to access any cash at all after spending hours in a queue.
Those covered by “relationship banking” services of private banks or
those categorised as “high net worth” customers of these banks are
obviously enjoying a privileged status in these times of scarcity.

A bank manager told Frontline that attention to basic details, such as
designing the new currency notes in identical dimensions and thickness
as the ones they were replacing, would have prevented the country’s two
lakh plus ATMs from going out of action for almost three weeks.

But the RBI’s culpability in the fiasco has been vastly aggravated by
the utterly non-transparent and arbitrary manner in which even the
limited currency has been rationed. There is evidence to show that some
banks, especially public sector banks, have been discriminated against;
moreover, within banks, deployment across branches has been on a
knee-jerk basis. Thomas Franco, vice president of the All India Bank
Officers Confederation, told Frontline that since November 10 private
banks in Tamil Nadu, especially the new-generation privately owned ones,
were given more cash than the public sector banks even though the
latter had a much wider branch network in the State. Although State Bank
of India has the highest number of currency chests (137) among banks in
the State, RBI instructed it to source its requirements from ICICI Bank
in Madurai and HDFC Bank in Coimbatore, he alleged. By the end of
November, while ICICI Bank had been given Rs.4,500 crore, HDFC Bank
Rs.900 crore and Axis Bank Rs.700 crore, all other banks put together
have been given just Rs.7,800 crore. This, despite the fact that private
banks account for just over a quarter of all bank branches in Tamil
Nadu.

Dr K.C. Chakrabarty, former Deputy Governor of the RBI, who
veteran journalists recall as being outspoken in manner, called upon
the RBI in a recent interview to Sucheta Dalal (Moneylife magazine) to
declare how much money, and in what denomination, was being distributed
and on what basis. Chakrabarty urged the RBI to disclose details of
“production, transportation, distribution and last-mile availability.
Only then will you have a snapshot of what is happening at the ground
level. Today, all this information is computerised and available; why
can’t it be put in the public domain? Do we know where the Rs.100 notes
are going? Is it to metro cities or rural areas?”

The enormous
vacuum caused by the disappearance of the 500-rupee note and the huge
gap between the good old 100-rupee note and the new pink 2,000-rupee
note have warped the social psychology with respect to holding cash.
This is not merely a problem of logistics for the Central bank; it has
huge implications for unequal access to cash in a cash-starved society.
There is no doubt that everybody is trying to hoard some cash,
especially 100s, simply because the 2,000-rupee note’s worth as a medium
of exchange is virtually non-existent. But a person’s ability to hoard
in order to simply tide over short-term liquidity is also conditioned by
his/her income levels. It is obvious that the poor of all kinds are
able to hoard a far smaller proportion of their income than the rich.

Speaking to Frontline, the besieged manager of a small branch of a
public sector bank in a village near Mandya said: “This form of hoarding
is aggravating the shortage, but I would call this hoarding at the
retail level. The much bigger problem of hoarding arises from the
wholesale scale of hoarding that is exclusively the preserve of the
rich.”

Ever since demonetisation began, there have been reports
of a thriving “exchange” racket from across the country. According to a
business source in Gurgaon, who has personally encountered the racket,
the “commission” for exchanging the outlawed currency for legitimate
notes ranges from 20 per cent to 35 per cent, depending on the place.
“The rate is most competitive, and in Delhi, Pune and Ahmedabad the rate
seems to be higher,” he told Frontline.

But this market for
exchanging notes appears to be thriving across the country, even in
smaller towns and villages. Enquiring about the possibilities for
“exchanging” currency just outside the Malavalli cocoon market near
Mandya on November 28, this correspondent met a youth from a nearby
village. He said several “brokers” had approached him in the preceding
week, asking him if he had any money to convert. Whipping out his phone
from his pocket, and pretending to speak on this correspondent’s behalf,
he called a local tout. The terms were clearly explained by the broker:
he would convert Rs. 1 crore of my currency in old notes and return,
within 30 minutes, Rs. 84 lakh, an effective commission of 16 per cent
on the transaction.

The thriving “exchange” racket is not merely a
convenience for the rich; it means an additional burden for the poor in
these difficult times. The exchange of invalid currency is, in effect,
sucking out a significant portion of the valid currency that is only
coming in a trickle. Just a single case would highlight what this means
for ordinary folk. The Income Tax Department’s recent haul of cash of
more than Rs.5.7 crore from the residences of two government officials
indicated that nearly Rs.5 crore was in the new pink notes. If a person
were to stand in a queue and draw Rs.2,000 each day, it would require
him/her to queue up every day for almost 45 years, if the person had so
much money in the first place. What this means is that demonetisation is
a double whammy on the poor: their lives are wrecked, apparently
because the government is suddenly determined to go after the rich, but
they have to suffer even more because these same rich folks have found
ways to escape demonetisation.

“Exchanging” currency is not the
only means available to the rich. When a currency is suddenly declared
invalid, there would be some who would try and change them into valid
forms. But the spirit of enterprise does not stop there; many more
avenues are available, limited only by their imagination. Wealth
holders, especially of a black hue, would seek any avenue to retain
their wealth. Cash may be the most liquid of all forms of wealth, but
wealth holders would seek to convert them into other forms; gold was one
avenue, but by no means the only one available. In fact, any commodity
would suit them just fine, even tender coconuts, as this correspondent
discovered in Maddur, about 80 kilometres from Bengaluru.

The
arrival of tender coconuts at the APMC (Agricultural Produce Market
Committee) yard in Maddur stopped soon after demonetisation. But
surprisingly, they picked up about a week later and even came back to
the pre-November 10 levels briefly. Mallesh, a small trader, explained
that the arrivals rose sharply from November 17 and lasted until
November 26. Mallesh said merchants from Mumbai and Pune “bought heavily
in this period, insisting on making payments in the now-invalid notes,
but especially wanted to dispose off their 1,000-rupee notes”. Mallesh
said that the merchants were even willing to “pay a small premium for
tender coconuts in order to convert their cash holdings in invalid
notes”.

This kind of activity is corroborated from other sources.
A top government official in Bengaluru told Frontline that several
Karnataka politicians, including State Ministers, have been actively
purchasing paddy and other agricultural products in order to “whitewash”
their stock of black money.

The conversion of cash to commodity
in a situation of a demand compression that has been provoked by
demonetisation has serious ramifications for not just the livelihoods of
the poor but the manner in which it aggravates social inequality on a
scale that would not have been possible without demonetisation.

Thus, cash hoarding is for ordinary folk seems to be the taunt of the
rich. It stands to reason that they would have utilised the severe
collapse in demand, and hence of prices, of a range of commodities, to
hoard stocks of these commodities, which can be sold for super profits
at a later stage. Not just that, in the process, they would have
converted a significant portion of their ill-gotten wealth. Indeed, the
adage in the world of business that a crisis is also an opportunity
never rang as ominously true as it does now in these times of mass
distress.

The amendments to the Income Tax Act, pushed hurriedly
through Parliament recently, amount to a concession to tax evaders.
Coming as it does, within two months of the last amnesty scheme that was
touted as a “last chance” to black money holders, it is in sharp
contrast to what honest citizens have been put through in the last month
in the name of demonetisation. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, a
former Indian Revenue Service officer, has pointed out that the penalty,
which was earlier expected to be 200 per cent on evaded incomes, has
been scaled down to 50 per cent. Kejriwal said demonetisation was a
scheme conceived to enable “unscrupulous people” to turn their black
money into white.
Shifting the goalposts

It became clear by
November-end that demonetisation would turn out to be all drama and no
effect. On November 29, Minister of State for Finance Arjun Ram Meghwal
told the Rajya Sabha that there were 17.165 billion Rs.500 notes and
6.858 billion Rs.1,000 notes in circulation on November 8. The total
value of these denominations on that day was Rs.15.44 lakh crore—Rs.8.58
lakh crore in 500-rupee notes and Rs.6.86 lakh crore in 1,000-rupee
notes.

A day prior to this, the RBI said that Rs.8.45 lakh crore
in these denominations had been deposited with banks during November
10-27. Moreover, on November 8, banks maintained Rs.4.06 lakh crore with
the RBI in order to comply with statutory cash-reserve ratio norms;
banking industry sources said most of this would have been in
high-denomination notes. In addition, banks’ cash holdings on November
8, meant to meet day-to-day requirements from customers, would have
amounted to at least 0.50 lakh crore. Thus, the total amount that has
been sucked out within the first three weeks of demonetisation would
have been at least Rs.13.01 lakh crore. With 84.26 per cent of the
targeted denominations already back, well before the half-way mark of 25
days, the question is: was it for this that millions of people have had
to suffer?

From the start, demonetisation was all about shifting
goalposts. First it was about black money and its links with
counterfeiting and terror financing. Later it shifted to a war on black
money, with Modi making the rather brave assertion that the rich and the
famous were in queues, just like their poorer brethren. Now it has
shifted to moving towards a “cashless society” in which cash would be
replaced by card-swiping and app-wielding citizens using mobile phones.
Among the goalposts that were shifted was the one by Arun Jaitley on
December 2, when he asserted, of course without any details, that a
significant portion of the old currency would soon be replaced by fresh
notes. But in the same breath, he stated, again without any
substantiation, that the total value of the fresh 500- and 2,000-rupee
notes need not be equivalent to the total value of the old 500- and
1,000-rupee notes pulled back from circulation. The implicit suggestion
is that an equivalent replacement of the currency is not required
because India is now on the revolutionary road that liberates it from
the shackles of cash, which is preposterous for at least two reasons.

First, Jaitley’s conjuring of monetary policy on the fly is not how it
happens in the real and modern world. As any undergraduate student of
economics would tell him, if he cares to pay attention, the quantum of
money needed in a dynamic economy that is growing is a function of many
variables—not just of the level of national income and its sectoral
composition or the levels of consumption and investment, but even social
attitudes to holding wealth in currency form. Jaitley’s cavalier
treatment of these weighty issues suggests that he is simply saying this
to evade responsibility for the wholesale bungling for which he is
directly responsible.

The second aspect of the new magic panacea
that is being spewed from all wings of the government in the last few
days, from the Niti Aayog, the institution that is a pathetic caricature
of the Planning Commission which it replaced, to Ministers scurrying in
damage-limitation mode, is that cash will be replaced by other forms of
payments. This is not only blatantly irresponsible, it is positively
insecure for the poor. Officials of the Niti Aayog, in the manner of
corporate trainers, have been busy conducting workshops in the last few
days, “educating” government officials on how to adopt cashless payment
systems.

A recent analysis of cashless payment systems,
particularly of e-wallet services and of mobile banking services, by
Medianama, a portal on digital and telecom businesses in India, warned
that a measured and gradual approach would be more prudent. For
instance, most of the e-wallet services “read” the user’s phone “status
and identity” and track their location. Medianama pointed out that most
people are “not aware of the implications of permissions being taken by
wallet apps, and have no control over the data that are being
collected”. It pointed out that wallet applications can “collect a
significant amount of behavioural information on users, which can be
used to create granular profiles of users, and market services to them”.
The fact that India has no privacy laws means that users have no
control over how their data are used by these companies. But this is not
merely a problem of privacy as understood in a vague and abstract
sense. The sheer scale on which data are being tapped and stored by
wallet companies, without any regulation, is also a significant security
hazard.

The cashless mirage

Mobile banking apps, which
are another approach to a cashless world, also suffer from similar
problems that not only compromise the user’s privacy but also pose a
security hazard. Arun Jaitley recently regretted that only 45 crore of
the 80 crore debit cards issued by banks are in use. If he had tried
asking a small trader or a person in a village, he would have understood
why. All payment systems come with a transaction cost. Medianama
founder Nikhil Pahwa has this to say in a recent article on his website:
“There is no parity between cash and digital money: a rupee paid by
cash is far more convenient for a user, and affords less costs, as
compared to a cashless system.”

First off, the uneven
distribution of mobile phones in the country implies unequal access to
transaction platforms. Moreover, as Pahwa points out, of the 343 million
Internet connections (even discounting for multiple connections in the
same household), 192 million are “narrowband” connections, indicating
that only a small fraction is ready for the cashless highway. Pahwa also
notes that debit card usage is currently about 18 transactions for
every 100 debit cards that have been issued; the average number for
credit cards is even lower, at 3.18.

While these data pertain to
the customer-end of the transaction, the data at the seller-end are
pretty disappointing too. There were 1.46 million point-of-sale (POS)
machines deployed across the country, which are most likely concentrated
in the metros. Pahwa quotes a study by Ernst and Young, which shows
that the POS penetration in India is only 693 machines per million
persons, compared to about 4,000 per million in China and Brazil.
Neither the fans of Modi’s cashless agenda nor the Niti Aayog officials
who have rushed where angels fear to tread have cared to point out that
even the beggar that Modi cited in his address at Moradabad would have
to pay a transaction charge on the POS terminal, apart from the rental
(about Rs.400-600 a month, according to one source).

Pahwa makes a
point tellingly, thus: “The difference between cash and digital is that
cash limits the damage to the loss of a note or of a number of notes.
In digital, the risks are higher.” He points out that digital payments
do have a role to play, just as cash does, but warns that a headlong
rush into digital systems “increases security risks for all citizens”.
Almost a century ago, in 1919, John Maynard Keynes wrote in The Economic
Consequences of the Peace: “Lenin was certainly right. There is no
subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society
than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces
of economic law on the side of destruction, and it does it in a manner
which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.” Although more
recent research (Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2009) indicates
Keynes’ attribution of Lenin may have been misplaced, his observation
appears laser-like in its accuracy in depicting the Indian plight today.
The massive transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich is not
confined to just agriculture. Huge swathes of industrial activity that
are concentrated in the small-scale sector could lose their business,
perhaps permanently, to larger entities whose dependence on cash is much
less then theirs. In short, demonetisation paves the way for a further
concentration of not only wealth in a manner that would not have been
possible by other means. That is why those who favour further
concentration have welcomed it as a “masterstroke”.

Sitting
outside a crowded bank branch in a village near Mandya, Siddegowda, a
sericulture farmer, said he was planning to abandon two cycles of his
cocoon harvest (a cycle lasts about a month) because he fears prices
would collapse even further. Despite his angst, however, he welcomes
“Modi’s assault on black money, but….” His voice trailing off, he does
not complete what he set out to say. Perhaps, as the prominent TV anchor
Ravish Kumar said recently, mediapersons ought to watch out for the
many “buts” that people want to, but are unwilling, to voice. That may
explain why people are sullen, rather than angry, now.

http://indianexpress.com/…/demonetisation-narendra-modi-go…/

Demonetisation: Reasons and excuses that seem more like afterthoughts

Two things that Modi itself is not denying are hardships
caused to people and setback to economy. It is, however, rationalising
these as the “price we need to pay to clean up the system”.

Written by Vivek Deshpande | Updated: December 10, 2016 8:12 pm

Of late, however, the main thrust of Modi justification has
been on the need to shift to cashless economy.(Illustration by C R
Sasikumar)

***We have seen enough explanations by Modi of
the provocation for the demonetisation bombshell. The first and the
foremost justification was that it would reduce the huge pile-up of
black money into a pulp of waste paper. It had also cited counterfeit
currency menace as an equally important urgency. Tagged with it was
also the reason of terrorist funding with counterfeit currency to
unleash mayhem in India. At last came the cashless economy argument.

But with almost all the cancelled old currency notes now set to return
to banks, the black money argument appears to be fast petering out.

And with terrorist attacks continuing, the efficacy of demonetisation
in containing the menace has also come into serious questioning.

Now remains the cashless economy argument to support the move.***
[Emphasis added.]

Over the last one month, Modi announced a slew of measures
to minimize the severe inconvenience caused to ordinary citizens,
labourers, farmers and other poor sections across the board. The huge
setback caused to the country’s economy due to slowing down of trades
and businesses on the wake of currency crunch is being passed of as
temporary. As recent as on Thursday, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley
announced many rebates and incentives to encourage digital transactions.

While many economists of highest stature have dissected the black
money argument of the government to show how the demonetisation move is
actually going to end up as a vain bid to stamp out corruption, most of
the supporters and even top leaders from the BJP have been citing
“common people’s support” to the move to drive home its sanctity. Not
many Modi-supporting economists have tried to put out any strong
economic calculations and arguments to rebut the claims made by the
critics of demonetisation.

Two things that Modi himself is not denying are hardships
caused to people and setback to economy. It is, however, rationalising
these as the “price we need to pay to clean up the system”.

Of late, however, the main thrust of Modi justification has
been on the need to shift to cashless economy. Surprisingly, however,
some very respected experts have virtually condoned the negative
impact of the move by pushing arguments that don’t befit their
intellectual acumen and integrity. Nandan Nilekani, architect of
Aadhar card, was trying to stress that the impetus the move is likely
to be the universalisation of Aadhar-based digitisation of financial
and administrative transactions. A very eminent administrator like
former Chief Election Commissioner S Y Quraishi has also ventured to
say that demonetisation will be to good effect if it is going to take
us forward on the path of long-cherished electoral reforms, chiefly
funding of political parties and elections.

***Jaitley claimed on Thursday that demonetisation has led to doubling
of plastic currency use percentage at fuel outlets from 20 to 40 pc.

He has also announced rebate on such transactions, which he said would
reduce the need for hard currency notes. Fair enough. But the question
is do all these things need demonetisation as a necessary
prerequisite? If the government would have announced Rs 10 lakh
insurance cover for railway commuters using online reservation
facility even without demonetisation, it would still have hugely
enhanced the use of plastic currency. Clearly, demonetisation was not
needed to encourage use of plastic currency or digital transactions.
In fact, demonetisation wouldn’t have caused as much damage as it has
done now had it been effected after significantly enhancing the use of
plastic currency and digital transactions first thereby vastly
reducing dependence on hard cash currency use.***

Similarly, it is difficult to understand how and why electoral reforms
couldn’t have been undertaken without demonetisation. They could and
should still have been. Not only would it have prevented rise of
speculation and conspiracy theories about the ruling political party
getting the privilege to exhaust its suspect funds before the
announcement but would also have lent a great “charity begins at home” credibility to its reformist countenance.

Clearly, the measures and steps being undertaken now as also the
silver lining that some experts are preferring to view about
demonetisation didn’t need demonetisation and are either afterthoughts
or benign overlooking of the unnecessary and avoidable disturbance
demonetisation caused to national life.

Views of the author are personal
—
Peace Is Doable

http://www.countercurrents.org/…/double-whammy-on-farmers-…/
Modi has struck a double whammy on our farmers. The farmers who are
already cashless even to buy seeds due to the ill conceived
demonetisation were struck down by the decision of Modi to scrap wheat
import duty (from 10 percent to zero). The logic behind this move is
questionable and will surely have a devastating effect on our farmers in
a way that cheap edible oils import already have

I Am In Queue. I Am Not A Black Money Holder
by N Srinivasa Rao

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/…/barack-obama-r…/1/831424.html

Barack Obama orders review of presidential election-related hacking by Russia

The review would encompass malicious cyber activity related to US
elections going back to 2008, said a White House spokesperson.

US President Barack Obama has ordered a review into hacking aimed at influencing US elections, the White House has said.

“The President has directed the Intelligence Community to conduct a
full review of what happened during this year’s election process. It is
to capture lessons learned from that and to report to a range of
stakeholders,” White House Homeland Security and Counter-terrorism
Adviser Lisa Monaco said on Friday.

According to CNN, White House
Spokesman Eric Schultz said the review would encompass malicious cyber
activity related to US elections going back to 2008.

Monaco said
the administration would be mindful of the consequences of revealing the
results of their review publicly, and Schultz said they will make
public “as much as we can”.

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Call for declassifying intel on Russia’s actions

All of the Democratic senators on the Senate Intelligence Committee
have called on Obama to declassify intelligence on Russia’s actions
during the November 8 election, CNN reported.

“You want to do so
very attentive to not disclosing sources and methods that would impede
our ability to identify and attribute malicious actors in the future,”
Monaco said of disclosure.

The review is intended to be done
before Trump’s inauguration on January 20. “He expects to get a report
prior to him leaving office,” Monaco said.

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Russia denies claims, wants evidence of involvement

In response to the news, the Russian government called for evidence of its involvement, denying claims made by the US.

“We are also very interested in understanding what they accused Russia of,” said Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.

“Many times Foreign Minister Lavrov has asked Americans to provide full information. But never had any response.”

The US government even before the election publicly blamed the Russian
government for cyberattacks designed to influence the outcome, including
hacks of Democratic groups like the Democratic National Committee.

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Attacks on voter registration systems

A steady stream of documents and internal emails from Democratic groups
and from Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman were released in the weeks
and months leading up to the election, with damaging consequences for
Democrats.

There was also concern about attempted attacks on
voter registration systems at the state and local level, though the
intelligence community never said there was strong evidence that was
tied to the Russian government.

While the Intelligence Community
has not suggested the attacks were designed to bolster Trump, the impact
of the hacks were much more damaging to Democrats and to Clinton.

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Republicans too have pointed fingers at Russia

Trump has denied a Russian role in the hacking, despite the
overwhelming consensus from private sector cybersecurity firms that
investigated the hacks and from the various US government intelligence
agencies.

Members of his own party have strongly pointed the
finger at Russia, and Republican Seniors John McCain and Lindsey Graham
are reportedly leading the charge among Republicans to investigate the
hacking.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes said
Russian interference was real, but dinged the administration for being
slow to react.

“It appears, however, that after eight years the administration has suddenly awoken to the threat.”

Democrats were quick to praise Obama on Friday. The top Democrat on the
House Intelligence Committee, California Rep Adam Schiff, called on the
White House to declassify as much as it could.

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