There are not many specifics to support the theory that the now-an-year-old demonetisation is responsible for all the ills allegedly continuing in the State’s vital sectors like construction but Kerala society in general still seems to be unwilling to agree that the crisis brought about by it has ended.
Politicians, except those belonging to the Sangh Pariwar, and most businessmen, especially in the field of construction, real estate and retail trade are accusing the Central Government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi of slamming them with two blows in one year — The one-year-old demonetisation and four-month-old GST implementation.
“We will see a lot of talk on TV shows about demonetisation on Tuesday and Wednesday with BJP leaders praising Modi and the Centre for the exercise as they celebrate the anniversary as anti-black money day and the Opposition parties denouncing it as just a black day. But the common man in Kerala needs no lessons on this,” said Gireesh Kumar, a stocks analyst.
Experts say several sectors in Kerala are yet to recover from the fall they had suffered after the demonetisation of November 8 last year. “To those who argue about the benefits of demonetisation, I would say that I haven’t been able to provide job for 60 per cent of my usual workers for the past one year,” general manager of Kochi-based construction firm said.
Sunny Mani, a Thrissur-based provisions retailer, said that GST had complicated the problems brought about by demonetisation. “I am not an economist to speak on long-term benefits. I have suffered a loss of a minimum of sales worth a minimum Rs 1.5 crore in the past one year. GST came to destroy me just when things were starting to improve since demonetisation,” he said.
Sudhakaran, a manpower agent in Muvattupuzha, perhaps the place with the highest density of migrant workers in Kerala, said that more than 40 per cent of the workers from outside had left the place in the three months since demonetisation. “Some have indeed come back but the fact is that they are not getting jobs the way they used to get before the note-freeze,” he said.
State Finance Minister TM Thomas Isaac of the CPI(M), himself an economist, is of the opinion that the slowness the note-freeze had caused in the economy has not yet faded away. He is still lamenting about the fall the growth in the State’s tax collection had suffered after demonetisation. The fall was to the tune of Rs 2,000 crore in a small State like Kerala, he says.
Similar was the case in other sectors — Cooperation, small and medium manufacturing, traditional industries, cashew, agriculture, horticulture, etc. “What purpose has the exercise servedIJ I don’t see any, at least in Kerala. Instead, it has ravaged all aspects of human life. Bankers are telling me even now about their continuing woes,” said Ajay Kumar, a former economics professor.
The fiercest protests against demonetisation in the country were witnessed perhaps in Kerala. The State’s Chief Minister and his Cabinet colleagues themselves had taken to the streets to hold a sit-in at the gates of the capital city office of the Reserve Bank. Even pro-liberalisation Congress leaders like Shashi Tharoor MP had courted arrest protesting against demonetisation.
When BJP leaders were blasting the left, especially the CPI(M), for allegedly turning the State’s cooperative banks into local “Swiss banks”, a special session of the Assembly was held on November 22 last year to pass a resolution underlining the need to protect these institutions that were allegedly being targeted by the Centre with its demonetisation programme.
A former member of the State Planning Board summed up — probably — Kerala’s majority sentiment on the note-freeze exercise thus: “We all know that the ill-effects of such a drive will end “eventually” (as the Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said). But what was the purposeIJ The Centre and the BJP have the responsibility to prove that it was not a blunder.”