It has been five years since demonetisation, the surgical strike on November 8, 2016, on India’s high-value currency notes. With hindsight,...
It has been five years since demonetisation, the surgical strike on November 8, 2016, on India’s high-value currency notes. With hindsight, it’s clear that the high-decibel crusade supposedly aimed at unearthing black money and suffocating terrorist funding ended with a whimper.
Instead of the redistributing illicit wealth of the rich to the poor, as it was claimed would happen, demonetisation destroyed the livelihoods of those who had no wealth, white or black. But what it essentially revealed once again that the world of exchange, which often seems to be based on equivalence, is embedded in a highly unequal distribution of access and power.
Ironically, the immediate crisis created by the collapse of exchange appeared to be an equaliser in terms of how pain was distributed. The rich and the poor seemed to equally bear the brunt of the ethical cleansing of the financial system. Everyone had to wait in long queues to obtain the valid means of purchase and payment.
Act of exchange
We suddenly realised how important currency was in our lives to express and realise our social existence through the act of exchange. Money represents a social relationship independent of its materiality: whatever we produce in our society assumes meaning only when it is...
