A drastic blow to the cash-heavy market, demonetization was instrumental in shaking citizens’ faith in legal tender. While the wider moral and legal arguments may have found favour within jingoistic circles, the actual impact of the move was borne by the lower and middle classes. By removing the anonymity attached to cash transactions and emphasizing on a passbook principle via bank transfers and a push towards debit and credit card usage, the state could in effect keep tabs on the circulation of funds.īy taking 86% of the total cash out of market circulation, the Indian government in effect froze and upturned the country’s economy. Unregulated (unrecorded, untaxed, and on occasion counterfeit) currency was presented as a cause rather than a symptom of national interest impinging on immorality. The first reason was propagated with much force, giving currency a moral character. In a country that has a broad-based informal economy, oiled by the anonymity cash affords, three key reasons were provided for the demonetization: To combat counterfeit notes and unaccounted funds that were apparently being used to fund illegal activities (terrorism, non-defined ‘anti-national’ activities to limit black money, that is income that evaded taxation to formalize the Indian economy and encourage a cashless transition. The word ‘notebandi’ translates directly as the closure of a note and that perhaps is best indicative of the disruption the suddenly-implemented policy caused. With a nationwide address, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the ‘notebandi’ of all 5 Rupee notes in circulation.
November 2016 saw the demonetization of the two most used currency notes in India. The broader question posed here is: does currency have morality? And does its decentralization erode this character? The Indian state seems to think so. I then make note of the déjà vu vocabulary from that fiscal policy intervention, which is being mobilized to justify the curbs on cryptocurrency. Rather, my goal here is to link the surge in Indian ownership of cryptocurrency to the 2016 wide scale demonetization of Rupee notes and the waveing trust in government-issued, centralized tender. My aim through this article is not to defend cryptocurrency or to summarize the contradictions in India’s digital empowerment roadmap. The goal of this program, according to its online charter, is to transform India into a ‘digitally empowered society and knowledge economy.’ This curious character of the policy move is further amplified when one sees the Bill in juxtaposition to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s flagship Digital India program. For a country that houses the largest number of cryptocurrency owners (as of October 2021), the government stance of blanket bans as opposed to regulation and fiscal intervention is peculiarly Luddite.
The criminalization of cryptocurrency has been stringent, with the government’s policy documents suggesting prison time for violators of the proposed law. The following are photos of an old-fashioned Vespasiano, or public urinal, still in use in the tiny town Morcone, province of Benevento.The proposed Cryptocurrency and Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill, 2021 would, in effect, ban the transaction and ownership of all private cryptocurrency in India. Today the Latin phrase is used to mean that the value of money is not tainted by its origins and even though public urinals have become a rarity, to this day they are still known in Italy as Vespasiani (Vespasians). With the introduction of public urinals, the liquid waste could be collected and sold as a source of ammonia, which was used for tanning leather and by launderers to clean the patricians’ white woolen togas. Up until then, Romans had simply urinated into pots that were emptied into cesspools. (The first public toilets ever, by the way, were introduced by Vespasian in 74 A.D). His famous aphorism “ Pecunia non olet” (Money does not smell) refers to the terse response he gave to his son Titus, who was complaining about the unpleasant nature of the Urine Tax his father had imposed on the product of the city’s urinals. Not a lot is known about the Emperor Vespasian’s life and brief rule, except that he was a highly competent general who built the gigantic Flavian Amphitheatre, better known as the Roman Colosseum.
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