“It would then have been self-evident from the outset that the evil of bourgeois society is not to be remedied by ‘transforming’ the banks or by founding a rational ‘money system’”.

-         Karl Marx, Grundrisse (1857-8)

AS is the wont of this government, the recent move to demonetise 500 and 1000 rupee currency notes has now become about nationalism. Not merely national interest, but nationalism itself. Such grandstanding is becoming a constant habit from this government, every time it finds itself walking on thin ice. Irrespective of its desirability, it is not a matter of dispute that the implementation of demonetisation has experienced teething problems. And as these problems have increased, so has the supposed bucket list this move addresses – cashless economy, black money, corruption, terrorism and now, nationalism. However, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has reassured us that people are generally supporting his policy. It is worth wondering though how he is privy to this sentiment given that he chose to rush to Japan on a State visit barely hours after announcing a decision that, in the words of this own government, is “transformational” or a “game-changer”. Optics, in matters of governance and leadership, is important.

The discourse over demonetisation has been stunted between the poles of transformational politics and inconveniences. Let us be clear on the latter, first. The most precarious in this country have not been inconvenienced in the past few days; they have been dislocated and their livelihoods irreparably damaged. Even the most well-meaning newspapers’ insistence on informing its readers about the ‘inconveniences’ (and calling it such) betrays an essentially middle-class, metropolitan outlook. Standing in a queue or being late to work is an inconvenience. There are many more thousands whose access to food, healthcare and allied services have terminated. There are reports of people dying, though media is quick to remind us (quite inexplicably) that a simple causality should not be assigned to these deaths. Harish Damodaran’s recent piece in the Indian Express forewarns that many in the unorganised sector stand to be squeezed out of the workforce as a ‘natural’ consequence of bottling up of wages, while other enterprises may be forced to lockout. Even amongst those who survive, the risk of experiencing a fall in wages is imminent, at least for the short term.

Much better heeled people have already poked holes in the assumed need for this policy. Only two points need to be rehearsed again. One, the greater proportion of the so-called ‘black money’ actually exists in the form of real estate, gold etc. As Prabhat Patnaik has pointed out in a recent article, black money does not necessarily exist as a huge stash of cash money. If not ‘invested’ in some physical form, it is kept away in foreign accounts and it is through these wire transfers that this money is made liquid, even for the purposes of funding terror cells in any territorial context. Second, this black money is not generated necessarily by unlawful evasion. Instead this is linked to the larger structures of money circulation in any economy. As a matter of fact, as Karl Marx had pointed out while responding to the Proudhanists of his time, “…the power of the bank begins only where the private ‘discounters’ stop.” There is no scenario in which the bank will have a complete monopoly over money (more on this later). Simply put, almost half of the Indian population does not have a bank account. Of those who have it, according to a World Bank Findex Survey (2014), 43 percent are dormant accounts. This suggests that at least two-thirds of the national population does not transact through bank accounts. It would be a leap to imagine that the money generated through the activities of this population (even if you discount the population of infants and non-working population) must be ‘black’.

The government on the other hand has insisted that there was no alternative mode through which such a change could have been effected.  We are told that the ‘inconveniences’ were inevitable to the nature of transformation that this policy envisaged precisely because had any steps been taken prior to the announcement, it would have allowed loopholes to proliferate within the system. In that case, the move which is meant to improve the lot of people would fail in its objective. To even begin to understand this particular rhetoric of the government, let us start from talking about money in general.

MONEY, NOT

BLACK MONEY

If equality is our concern then the problem is not with black money, but money itself. Money, regardless of the form it takes, does not have an innate value. What it acquires in circulation is convertibility for commodities that have a certain use value for their consumers. So, in effect, the value of money is derived from the labour time accumulated in the past; or the value one ascribes to the labour that has gone into producing that commodity. This means, that a government can tinker as much as it wants with money but it will only keep reproducing ways in which hierarchies exist since money consolidates those inequalities. The instrument of circulation in every epoch is an effect of (and subsequently, cause of) a longer process of concentration of capital and thereby mediates the (then-) existing relations of production. Marx has been very unambiguous on this question- formal modifications in different civilized forms of money can only reproduce the inherent hierarchies within a system, in one or another form. For our analysis then, currency change will never really achieve a transformational objective (towards ameliorative ends) without, “touching the existing relations of production and the social relations which rest on them” (Marx:1857-8; 122).

There is no real gain to be made by changing the colour of money or toying whether Gandhi’s face will be centre-aligned or right aligned on our currency notes. So is the presupposition here that nothing short of replacing paper/ credit money with labour money the only way forward for Modi? Hardly.

No one should believe that this decision was taken in a short span of time and with utmost secrecy. There is evidence now trickling in about the prior knowledge of this impending change, even if the details of the policy were not entirely known. What makes the emperor’s new robe so painful is the abject way in which it has cut millions off from basic livelihood and sustenance resources. This aspect was wholly avoidable had the government moved towards an increased network of services, thereby reducing the tremendous reliance on cash money for daily living. A more sincere government would have ensured that food distribution through public distribution system was efficient and regular, made budgetary allocation towards universal health and education especially in parts most bereft of these services, increased spending on social schemes such as MGNREGA (recall, the shockingly condescending attitude this PM has towards right to work). The CPI(M) has consistently vocalised the systematic ways in which all these sectors have lagged under this government. Some are simply discontinued while others have been emaciated through neglect, starving them of necessary funds or even balking at them with derision. The solutions that get tom-tomed around in media simply repeat technocratic solutions such as introducing lines for senior citizen or making sure ATMs were equipped for this currency change. Such moves do not in themselves make lives better, they make life convenient.

You will seldom meet a person who does not want to live in a society rid of corruption or terrorism. These are universal aspirations, not merely national. Make them about nationalism, if you want to. But then let that nationalism also reflect the impunity with which religious minorities and dalits get killed, the young scholar who goes missing from the national capital and the dissenting voices that are gagged. It is this nationalism, not your love for “shock and awe”, which will be your legacy.