Amid the hampered cash flow as a result of demonetisation, beggars, hawkers and homeless labourers have also been significantly affected.
While they gave mixed reactions over the issue, hawkers who sell products at the red lights across the streets of the city said there was a 50 per cent decline in their sales.
“I sell clothes on the pavement at Nirankari colony. The sales dropped massively. I am not even able to pay the school fees of my children,” said Rohit Kumar near Azadpur market.
Anshu Devi (42) who sells handmade accessories at Burari said, “I curse the day when this decision of currency ban was taken. We are a family of five and we had to sleep empty stomach many times. Often we don’t have enough money to buy meals.”
Among the weaker sections of the society, that is facing hardships after note ban, there are many whose treatments have got delayed due to cash crunch.
“Usually, I used to earn profit of around Rs 200-250 per day. But post demonetisation my sales have dropped to half and sometimes there were none as people do not have enough cash”, said Parvez, who sells momoes near Delhi University.
However, some beggars have had the opportunity to get scrapped notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 from those who possibly had no place to stash the black money any longer.
One of the beggars said that one day a man came at night and distributed Rs 500 per head.
“I found it hard to exchange it and finally a dhaba malik (owner) exchanged it for Rs 400. Some of my friends however, could not exchange the money.”
Vendors at Kashmiri Gate metro station said, “They (beggars) have been busy earning from this opportunity. For our surprise, some of them came to us with Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes and requested to exchange it for Rs 400 or more but we turned down their request down.”