Demonetisation: An Ordinary Citizen's Thought

We have heard a lot of arguments for and against the demonetisation move of the government. Many support, many oppose and many are confused. Some have been inconvenienced more than others. As a ordinary citizen of the country, my thoughts on this subject is as follows:

I believe every Indian citizen who is paying tax due to intent or compulsion ( many end up paying tax because it is TDS from salary) . Why I said compulsion is because every salaried employee knows that only 3 crore Indians pay income tax out of a population of 125 crores. If I take one is to 5 ratio of tax payer to dependents, still we need to have 25 crore people paying tax. But, only 3 crore Indians file tax returns and 60-70 % of that is NIL tax. There is anger in tax payers mind that while I am being forced to pay tax, most of the business men evade tax or pay significantly lower tax by window dressing books of accounts.

I believe that this population and the poor who don't have any use of high denomination of notes are happy with the action taken. This gives a feeling of revenge taken. Now, whether this action of demonetisation of currency will bring result is a question in every ones mind including mine.

There are arguments on both sides, I am on the side which believes that it will benefit us. But, people want instant gratification, which is a problem. One can't deliver a baby in one week. It normally takes 9 months and have to go through enormous pain. India was under foreign rule for more than 700 years if you include Mughals. During this period also, whenever some king or individual wanted to fight like Rana Pratap Singh of Mewar against Akbar , Kattaboman or Balganghadar Tilak, Gandhi against British. They were a lot of nay sayers... either one has to act or support people, who act.

We need to have patience to see the results. What are the measures that will reflect that the action taken has had positive impact? 1. Fiscal Deficit has to go down 2. Banks will be having more cash in hand resulting in lower rates on deposits and loans 3. Real Estate prices should come down from current levels 4. Inflation should moderate 5. Counterfeiting if currency should reduce 6. Money available for terrorist and miscreants should drain. All this will take any where from 6 months to 24 months to show results.

I have the patience to wait and see. I respect all those who have made significant change. PV Narasimha Rao, who brought country back from bankruptcy to liberalisation... he did not speak much.

Vajpayee, non corrupt government, Golden Quadrilateral... Indira Gandhi who invested in missiles and space technology when everyone questioned the need for rockets when India was a poor nation. We have reached Mars now... she made sure that the adversary is shown it's place in 1971.

Now, Modi...he acts that is what I like the most. This country is full of thinkers and opinion holders and very few doers. He does and hence I welcome his actions. I believe that certain section of the society is very unfair to Modi. A student who was scoring 40 out of hundred is trying to improve the score and started taking action which will result in 60-70 but the nay sayers keep complaining that you promised to score 100 and hence you have failed. We need to appreciate the effort taken to improve the situation.

Corruption is present since time immemorial, otherwise India would not have been ruled by foreigners for a long time. If we believe that this can be solved in 1-2 year then we are fooling ourselves.

Bottom line is that I will not spend time in debates on the subject of whether this current action will yield results. I will wait for 12-18 months to conclude whether it was useful or not.

IPL - The need of the hour

One thing that stays constant in this world is “change”. There is a continuous evolution in nature, science, technology; and sports & entertainment is no exception to that. In pre-independent era the movies used to run for more than 4 hrs, now it has come to 2-2.5 hrs and many movies are about 1.5 hrs. This has happened primarily because people have less and less time nowadays and they want to derive instant success; instant result and they want the entertainment also to be instant.

IPL fits the bill of a popular sport and instant entertainment and hence the nation has got addicted to IPL.

What is the objective of IPL? To promote cricket among a larger base of population who does not watch Cricket due to the lengthy format of the game. The byproducts of this initiative are that

1. More number of domestic player get to earn a good salary
2. Domestic players get a chance to rub shoulders with the international players which improves the game.
3. The players get a chance to show case their talent and increase their chance to be selected to the national team.

IPL is a blessing for the cricket fans, media, cricketers, BCCI, sponsors, franchisee, this is one love story with multiple partners and with a happy ending, everyone is happy. Even the GoI is happy as they get so much of tax in form of IT, Entertainment tax.

If all is well, then why the grouse about IPL. It’s all because of awe and jealously. Many people are not able to accept the affluence being exhibited in open by IPL, but this is what the need of the hour, to promote sports in this country. You need money.

It is very unfortunate that in India, the one time World Champion of Hockey does not get entry into Olympics. Every sport needs money, money attracts talent, talent attracts money, and it’s a positive spiral in action.

We should actually ask Lalit Modi to become the Chairman of FIH (Federation of Indian Hockey) to prop up the dwindling fortune of this game. We need Lalit Modi for every sport.

Is IPL looting money from common man like you and me, NO…Is the money being spent our money…no…then why bother about the same….many complain that IPL has become a business venture and favorite ground for gamblers….if that is a point of argument then the stock market BSE and NSE are the biggest gambling arena in this country and every one of us is directly or indirectly part of this gamble.

If there are certain issues in management of IPL which is not legal that needs to be addressed, make changes to improve IPL further.

Lets see an analogy, you build a beautiful home, and living happily in that and suddenly you find mosquitoes in the house, will you use mosquito repellant or burn the house….the choice is ours…..

Lacuna in Indian Education System and need of board exam

India has 28 states and 7 union territories following there own method of education at primary, secondary and tertiary level. There are numerous governing boards; we can say confidently that each state has at least one board for framing the policy and syllabus for education. There are 42 Boards of school education recognized by Council of boards of School Education in India.

Please refer the URL http://www.du.ac.in/du/school_education.pdf for the list



The biggest problem of such a diversified system of education is that the quality of education varies from state to state and within a state depending upon the board of education. There is no common platform to evaluate the students in the country. The content of the subjects like science, math vary and in many cases it is found to be outdated and not in tandem with the recent developments in those fields.

The other key drawback of the system is that the students are expected to memorize the formulae and apply it without teaching them how and why the formula is used.

To aggravate the problem further, the government schools particularly in rural areas don’t have teachers in required numbers and many of the existing teachers are not of standard.


Recently, the government has done away with the 10th board exam in CBSE citing the reason of reducing stress on students, they have made this optional. This will be of little help in improving the knowledge of the students given the existing system of education.

There is more than one way to reduce the stress of the students who take board exams rather than making it optional. A few suggestions are as follows:

1. Increase the duration of examination from 3 hrs to 4 hrs so that students can breathe easy and complete the exam comfortably.
2. Keep the duration of the exam as 3 hrs but reduce the amount of questions in exam
3. Provide ample gap between one exam and another; provide 3 day break between exams.
4. Make the exam more of objective questions like multiple choice questions; this will reduce the stress of writing scores of pages.

If India has to compete with China and US then it can be achieved only through quality education and competent students and the government’s decision to make the board exam optional will work only against the interest of the nation.

This will result in a society which appreciates complacency, lethargy and mediocrity; this is equivalent to socialism of USSR which failed miserably.

Why the government is worried only about the stress of students who are taking 10th board exam. There are children who train themselves in many other fields like Cricket, Chess, Tennis and other sports.

If we extend the same logic of reducing stress of kids in other fields then there will be no competition for kids till the age of 17; will this help them in winning medals for the country. Country like China identifies kids at the age of 2-3 for developing them for Olympic Games and put them through proper training and of course they are made to complete from the tender age to make them strong.

The government is trying to address the symptoms of the problem rather that the problem itself which is disheartening. The government should take a hard look at the lacuna of the existing education system and take some concrete measure rather than doing some easy window dressing to cover the problem.

Full Capital Account Convertibility thwarted Airtel – MTN Deal

The shelved $23-billion mega deal between Bharti Airtel and South Africa's MTN would have been the biggest ever M&A transaction by any Indian company. The South African government insisted on dual listing of the companies which came as the stumbling block to the deal.

The dual listing of the stock means that Bharti will be listed in the BSE/NSE as well as the Johannesberg Stock Exchange and for this the government has to make changes in the existing Companies Act, Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) and allow Capital Account Convertibility (CAC) of Indian currency.

Indian government has been mulling over the idea of CAC of the currency from the time the Reserve Bank set up Tarapore Committee to make recommendation for the same in 1997. In 2006, the committee had submitted the recommendation with perquisites that have to be satisfied before implementation of the CAC.

The government is in a dilemma due to the following reasons:
Indian authorities would not be able to monitor sectoral caps on direct and indirect investment that are imposed on 13 industry sectors, including telecom.
Entities that are ineligible for investing in Indian companies could have acquired a stake through transactions carried out on the overseas exchange, in violation of the Foreign Exchange Management Act (Fema).
Allowing dual listing would also have weakened the Securities and Exchange Board of India’s oversight of the stock market, led to trading activity being taken away from stock exchanges in India and a likely revenue loss for the Indian exchequer.
The fear of something similar to East Asian Crisis in late nineties which every one feels that was aggravated due to the CAC policy of those countries.


In the current scenario where the Indian companies are scouting for big M&A’s, the CAC looks like an inevitable one.

What are innovative ideas that will help the government implement CAC and safe guard the interest of the nation.