Human Rights Violation No. 1: You have the money in the account but you can’t withdraw more than 2000 from any functioning ATM, even if you are lucky to find one.
Image: India Today
Human Rights Violation No. 2: You have the money in the account but you can’t withdraw more than Rs. 24K howsoever acute your need may be, even if you approach your own branch and stand in a queue for close to 4 hours.
Human Rights Violation No. 3: You have the money in the account but you no longer have ‘economic free will’ to decide what component you may want to spend by cash or by card.
Human Rights Violation No. 4: You have the money in the account but since you are not comfortable with cards and never bothered to use one, you are suddenly feeling left out of the so-called digital loop and have no real access to your bank balance.
Human Rights Violation No. 5: You have the money in the account but you have no wish to torture yourself with queues and bank officials and hence try to get by by pretending ‘Tomorrow it will get better’.
Human Rights Violation No. 6: You have the money in the account and you probably have a card too but you live in a place where trade happens mostly by cash and that card is no longer of much use because your ATM never had much cash even on a normal day before demonetisation.
Human Rights Violation No. 7: You have the money in the account… wait you have the money but you never had an account because banks never really encouraged opening an account for you in remote corners of the country for they were never really equipped to deal with the traffic there.
Human Rights Violation No. 8: You never had an account because you never had the money to sustain the account. You subsist by way of daily wages and now the people who employ you daily don’t have cash to pay you because you don’t have a card, an e-wallet or a mobile to begin with. You have no idea why the world has suddenly decided to stand on its head to mess with you in particular but you cannot crib about it because it’s a ‘minor inconvenience’.
When every economic argument for and against demonetisation is over and done with, the single biggest thing yet staring at us is the sheer human cost. To deny that is to deny the very essence of the Constitution and our Democracy.
Courtesy: India Resists