A Baniya’s Take On Demonetisation

Then I decided to not go to either ends of the society, i.e., the uneducated poor or the educated upper middle class. I decided to ask baniyas sitting in the main market and dealing in goods worth crores per annum while filing paltry income tax returns. The core untaxed money generators of the economy who have voted this government to power and form the backbone of the ruling party’s vote bank. I talked to a friend running an electrical supplies shop who joined the baniya business at 21. He summed up the discussion in one line “Bhaiya darr lag hai Modi se abb”. I egged him to elaborate. He said how they had to sell goods without the bill for years because if they don't do it, the shop next door would do it. So they had a choice between perishing or moving the way market does. He then continued and said that with this move, the entire business community is terrified of the PM and believes that he can do absolutely anything to end their practice of evading taxes. In his words “Jab rupiyaa band kar sakte hai toh such bhai kar sakte hai. Hum log yeh saara dhanda karma hi rupiya banana ke shanti ka zindagi ke liye karma hai. Lekin inna daara diya woh ki saab apna books pakka kar raha hai abb jaldi se” The crux of the conversation with him was that this move provided the much-needed push the business community needed to change the basic way they functioned. Followed by his daily rhetoric in election rallies against black money, the business community wants to evolve as soon as possible lest they get entangled in a legal mess.

I talked to a couple more people from the community and they echoed similar sentiments in different ways. This is one perspective no opinion column has given me in the past 10 months of my research and discussion with MBA students and teachers at IIM Udaipur.

Moral of the story: The perception of the people in the business markets is very different from what the political analysts portray in the media houses. The narcissist Indian in me sees all of those media houses and intellectual opinion columns biased towards one end or the other now. The true picture is reflected when working in the field!