RESIDENT SPEAK: Are banks to blame for your cash crisis?
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RESIDENT SPEAK: Are banks to blame for your cash crisis?

We asked readers to send in their cash-crunch stories. Here's one by TC Batra, secretary of Dwarka's Dream Apartments RWA, in which he laments about a cash-22 situation he faced on one of his bank visits.

RESIDENT SPEAK: Are banks to blame for your cash crisis?

Demonetisation is a great step taken by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Most of us support him in this effort to eliminate black money. However, it has been more than a month and the public is still struggling to withdraw their own hard-earned cash for basic necessities such as medicines, milk, vegetables, groceries, laundry, bus tickets, pocket money for grandchildren and hiring autos, to name a few. It is impossible to rely just on digital platforms to make payments for these services — they need cash.

Of late, I have been to the HDFC Bank in Bengali Market twice and it has been the same story both the times. The last time, when I reached the bank at 8.30 am, people had already started queueing up. I went and stood in the queue for senior citizens. By 10.10 am, the bank started calling people in to withdraw cash. At 10.45 am, after having paid 12 people from the senior citizens' queue and 12 from the general one, the bank manager announced that they had run out of cash. The security guards on duty, however, were seen passing on cheques of favoured clients/friends for processing.

There were other senior citizens in the queue behind me — some barely able to walk, some who could walk only with the help of a stick — and all of them with no place to sit. The bank officials behaved as if we were queueing up for loans, whereas it was our own money we wished to withdraw. Our hard-earned money, that we have saved through all these years for a rainy day, can only be ours if the bank officials want it too? I have had surgery on my knees and I saw no point in visiting the bank again after the first two times.

Our Honourable Finance Minister and other senior officials have been claiming that they have sufficient cash to meet the requirements. But when you visit any of the banks, they all maintain that they have no money for disbursement. At the same time, newspapers are carrying reports of people being caught with bundles of new currency. Where can they be getting hold of such large sums of money in the new currency if they are not hand-in-glove with the banks? Putting the people caught with large sums behind bars, however, will hardly bring any respite to the poor and the middle class. It needs to be ensured that adequate cash actually reaches the common man. I would like to urge someone from the concerned government departments or RBI to visit these banks to understand the reality. Only then can they understand how the common man is suffering.

Jai Hind!

 

TC Batra is the secretary of Dream Apartments RWA, Dwarka.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in the article above are his own and CitySpidey does not endorse them in anyway.



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