Currency crisis deepens in India; 70 dead in 16 days

Opposition forms giant human chain outside parliament;
demos held across country; Modi’s effigy burned in Bijnor

NEW DELHI: The historic step of the Centre to ban old high-value currency notes in a bid to combat corruption and black money has worsened the currency crisis and brought some bad news in its wake.

As many as 70 people have been reportedly dead in several parts of the country due to the demonetisation drive during the last 16 days. Some of these unfortunate people died standing in queues, others when some medical shops, hospitals and local vendors refused to accept Rs500 and Rs1,000 notes.

In a tragic incident, a child died in the Bulandshahr branch of Kailash hospital, owned by Union Culture and Tourism Minister Mahesh Sharma, as his parents had only old currency notes and the hospital administration allegedly wanted him to deposit an advance of Rs10,000, reported The Huffington Post. Another major case reported from Surat (Gujarat) where a 50-year-old woman committed suicide. The mother of two was not able to buy ration to feed her family because the ration shops refused to accept the old currency notes.

There have been other cases of businessman dying out of chest pain just by hearing Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s November 8 speech where he announced the government’s demonetisation plan of Rs500 and Rs1,000 currency notes. In one such incident, a young man died of heart attack in Kanpur. The man had received Rs70 lakh in advance for selling his land just the previous day of the announcement. He had been trying to sell his land for months.

A 55-year-old woman in the Mahububabad district of Telangana known as Kandukuri Vinoda, who had saved an amount of Rs54 lakh, committed suicide because she thought the money that she had saved for various reasons was worthless all of a sudden. The saga of deaths surrounding this demonetisation doesn’t stop here. A washerwoman of the Kushinagar district of Uttar Pradesh died out of shock when she came to know that these were no longer legal tender. The situation grows much worse in the Howrah district of West Bengal where a man murdered his wife because she returned empty-handed from the ATM.

Cases of death-related dowry have also been reported as a 45-year-old man from Kaimur in Bihar died because he thought that the Rs35,000 he had saved would no longer be accepted by the in-laws of his daughter. As per reports of the Indian Express, Karthikeyan, 72, a native of Harippadu in Alappuzha, collapsed and died in front of a State Bank of Travancore (SBT) branch after standing in queue for several hours since Friday morning. He was taken to a nearby hospital but could not be saved, the police said.

Meanwhile, the release of films in the state has been postponed until the currency crisis is over. Sales of lottery tickets and liquor, the main sources of tax revenue for state government, have come down drastically.

Opposition parties on Wednesday put up a united front against the Centre over demonetisation as they formed a giant human chain outside the parliament chanting slogans and carrying placards, fervently demanding Prime Minister Modi‘s presence in the house.

The chain began from the entrance of the parliament near the media stand and stretched across the Mahatma Gandhi statue. “The nation is standing in line and we are doing just that here,” Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi said.

Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader Derek O’Brien, Janata Dal (United)’s Sharad Yadav and DMK’s Kanimozhi were among the almost 200 opposition MPs gathered on parliament premises. “Not a surgical strike, but carpet bombing on people”, “stop the persecution of common people” and “Save poor people” were some of the slogans on the placards held by the leaders.

Meanwhile, senior union ministers including Rajnath Singh and Ananth Kumar are scheduled to hold a meeting in Venkaiah Naidu’s chamber to decide the government’s strategy in the parliament. Also on Wednesday, more than 200 lawmakers took to the streets of New Delhi as part of their latest agitation against the government’s decision.

Modi’s political adversaries have said a demonstration would be held on Monday, November 28, in a show of solidarity with the people who are suffering due to the demonetisation drive. Demonstrations and rallies are planned outside banks in both rural and urban areas of the country by the main opposition Indian National Congress (INC).

In Bijnor, Modi’s effigy was burned by the Congress party due to currency ban. Gujarat farmers also protested against Modi’s demonetisation move.