demonetisation

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Demonetisation is 'the' trending topic in India. It brought along with it a scarcity of cash and an abundance of rumours. Social media has been on fire with rumours surrounding demonetisation. Very few people had a clear idea of what was actually happening. Here we have compiled a list of rumours related to demonetisation in the last one and half months. Know where your notes are The new Rs 2000 was rumoured to have remote GPS tracking abilities due to a chip embedded within the note, right out of a sci-fi flick. Giving due credit to the guy who thought this up, such…

WhatsApp is huge in India. It reaches the common man much more than Facebook or Twitter does in India. It’s so big that government authorities in India use WhatsApp for information dissemination or even to get information. For a lot of people in India, WhatsApp has become the window to the Internet. Many in the country now use WhatsApp to get news. Most of them get this news while being part of a big group as ‘forwards’. This makes it a rich medium for any controversial news to go viral. Also a good medium for scammers. Recently, the prime minister of India mentioned…

In the wake of the Indian government’s decision to demonetise currency notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 from the market, and ensuing restrictions on withdrawing money from banks, the common man has had to grapple with considerable liquidity challenges. More than three weeks since the announcement, those primarily using cash as trading currency are still facing a crunch. ATM queues, paucity of lower denomination notes, confusion over exchange and withdrawal policies linger. For a citizenry used to working with cash, this appears as an insurmountable hurdle. They are just at their wits’ end. The government, however, has been pitching…

My father once told me, “Son, once you find a good barber and an accountant, you should never change them”. Well, that has become quite difficult this last week – my trusted neighbourhood barber doesn’t accept cards and I don’t have cash to pay him! The recent announcement of the government to demonetize 500 and 1000 rupee notes has indeed caused a major upheaval in my life! Our family also knows that we might be unintentionally exacerbating the “Digital Divide” in recent days. We used to spend quite a bit of our household budget on the local grocer, but have…