The Cashless Economy of Chikalthana

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/11/18/the-cashless-economy-of-chikalthana/
Date Written:  2016-11-18
Publisher:  CounterPunch
Year Published:  2016
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX20133

An article about the cash crisis in the Indian village Chikalthana.

Abstract: 
Excerpt:

In Chikalthana village, on the edge of and merging with Aurangabad town in Maharashtra, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's dream of a cashless economy seems to have been realised. Nobody has any cash. Not the banks, nor the ATMs and certainly not the people queuing up in and around them in despair. Even the policemen sitting in the vans outside bank branches haven't any.

But cheer up. They'll soon have ink marks on their fingers.

In the State Bank of Hyderabad (SBH) at Shahganj within the walled city of Aurangabad, you can see equally desperate bank staff struggling to help their impoverished clients. There and in other branches of every single bank in the town, soiled notes worth crores of rupees in denominations of Rs. 50 and Rs.100 – meant to be sent to the Reserve Bank of India for final destruction – are being reintroduced into circulation. The RBI knows of this but condones it through silence.