✌✌✌✌ THE HINDU ✌✌✌✌
✌✌ Disunity in opposition ✌✌
Ever since the Bharatiya Janata Party was voted to power with a majority of its own in the 2014 Lok Sabha election, Opposition parties have been trying to find an issue that would resonate with the people, identify a rallying point that would put the Narendra Modi government at the Centre on the defensive. But when such an issue did crop up after Mr. Modi announced the demonetisation of high-value notes on November 8, opponents of the BJP found themselves unprepared and unable to tap into the public resentment at the seemingly unnecessary pain caused by the shortage of cash. The demonetisation exercise did far more than divide the Opposition parties: it left them confused on the approach to be taken against the government. They were unable to fault the stated aims of the move: to curb black money, flush out counterfeit notes from the economy, and thereby curb terror funding. And when Mr. Modi sought 50 days to ease the cash flow, his opponents had no choice but to wait it out. Other than making noises about long queues at banks and ATMs and the flip-flops in announcing new rules for withdrawals and deposits and amending them in quick time, they had little to do. They could not attack the move in principle without being seen as supporting the corrupt and the devious. And they could not attack the manner of implementation without giving Mr. Modi the time he wanted to deal with what could not but have been a crisis in cash supply.
It was probably inevitable that the Opposition parties would speak in different voices on an issue like this, but it was inexplicable that the main Opposition party, the Congress, did little to forge a united front in Parliament and outside. When Opposition parties were planning to petition President Pranab Mukherjee on the demonetisation issue, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi met Mr. Modi with a delegation of party leaders to request a waiver of farm loans. Leaders of the Samajwadi Party, the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Left parties were unhappy with the Congress approach. Not surprisingly, at a joint press conference of Opposition parties called by Mr. Gandhi, only Trinamool Congress leader and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee was at hand to attack Mr. Modi. The other participants were mostly long-time allies of the Congress. The Janata Dal (United), whose leader Nitish Kumar had nice things to say about demonetisation initially, did not participate in a maha dharna organised by the RJD against demonetisation. The JD(U) stand was that it would rather wait for the 50 days before judging the move to be a failure or a mistake. Far from bringing together Opposition parties, the demonetisation move appears to have driven apart parties already in alliance.
✌✌ Statesmanship at Pearl Harbour ✌✌
Conspicuous gestures of reconciliation between nations to heal the deep emotional wounds of wars will have connotations that go beyond the symbolic. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, through his visit to Pearl Harbour this week, and U.S. President Barack Obama, with his homage at the peace memorial at Hiroshima earlier in May, have undertaken this bold and difficult journey on behalf of their peoples more than 70 years after atrocities were committed against each other during World War II. That so much time should have been lost in both instances to put the painful past behind them only speaks to the powerful presence of nationalist sensibilities that invariably distort the moral force of reconciliation. That this should have occurred only now, despite the enduring economic engagement of several decades between Washington and Tokyo, merely underscores their ticklish nature and the strong political overtones involved. In the case of Japan, the conservatives have long regarded any attempt to own up the slaughter of hundreds of U.S. marines at Pearl Harbour in 1941 as nothing but a betrayal of the national interest. In fact, in comparison, earlier visits to the naval base by Japanese leaders were relatively low-key affairs.
As for Washington, veterans of the war have seen little justification in the claim that the devastation caused by the twin nuclear bombings had to be condoled. In their view, the horror in Hiroshima and Nagasaki brought the war to a close sooner than it might otherwise have been. They have also sought to repudiate the narrative that the dropping of the atom bomb was a calculated demonstration of U.S. and western military superiority in a Cold War scenario. These competing nationalistic accounts have possibly helped the current generation in the two countries to see such views with a healthy dose of scepticism. Messrs Abe and Obama have displayed a statesmanlike readiness to rise above partisan accounts, emphasising instead the need to bridge the gulf that neither history nor geography could have narrowed. President-elect Donald Trump’s pre-election rhetoric painted a picture of Japan as a nation that ought to be prepared to invest more in its own defence. The favourable public opinion in both countries towards each other will possibly prove critical in consolidating upon the current strengths in the economic partnership and weathering the uncertainties of the future. Prime Minister Abe and President Obama have shown how history can be revisited in a realistic manner. It remains for countries grappling with their own complex pasts to draw the right lessons from this.
✌✌✌✌ THE ECONOMIC TIMES ✌✌✌✌
✌✌ Absurd to penalise holding old notes ✌✌
The government has come out with an ordinance to extinguish the old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes and to penalise possession of more than a handful of these notes after the deadline of March 31 for their surrender at RBI branches. Extinguishing demonetised notes is perfectly understandable.
That is the only way to legally remove the RBI’s liability to honour the notes in question. And that is the way to reduce liability on the RBI’s books of the notes that fail to come back to the banking system and possibly liquidate an equivalent amount of assets and transfer them to the profit and loss account, from where the government can be paid extra dividends. But why penalise possession of old notes? And why has the bar been kept at 10 notes? It suggests ignorance of numismatic practices. Collectors of currency notes have at least two notes of each kind, one to display the obverse and the other to display the reverse. Notes differ not just by denomination. A note of the self-same denomination can have multiple variants, differing in size, colour, design (that includes the number of languages listed on the note), signature of the RBI governor of the time, inset alphabet, curious numbers and errors. A casual collector might have say, 20 notes each of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes. Now, the government wants to punish them for their collector’s passion. This is patently absurd and calls for at least one more of the U-turns at which the government and the RBI have become adept.
Once demonetised, these notes no longer store value, nor can they be used for transactions. But they can serve as units of account in say, a game of Monopoly. Why not let something that has been rendered a plaything serve as a plaything? If the aim were to penalise someone for having hidden income from the government in the past, the law already provides for it but the penalty has to be linked to the extent of concealment, not to some notes held in possession. Penalising possession of old notes is like penalising possession of floppy discs, old wine bottles or milk teeth. Surely, the government has better things to do than to harry collectors of quaint things.
✌✌ Disunity in opposition ✌✌
Ever since the Bharatiya Janata Party was voted to power with a majority of its own in the 2014 Lok Sabha election, Opposition parties have been trying to find an issue that would resonate with the people, identify a rallying point that would put the Narendra Modi government at the Centre on the defensive. But when such an issue did crop up after Mr. Modi announced the demonetisation of high-value notes on November 8, opponents of the BJP found themselves unprepared and unable to tap into the public resentment at the seemingly unnecessary pain caused by the shortage of cash. The demonetisation exercise did far more than divide the Opposition parties: it left them confused on the approach to be taken against the government. They were unable to fault the stated aims of the move: to curb black money, flush out counterfeit notes from the economy, and thereby curb terror funding. And when Mr. Modi sought 50 days to ease the cash flow, his opponents had no choice but to wait it out. Other than making noises about long queues at banks and ATMs and the flip-flops in announcing new rules for withdrawals and deposits and amending them in quick time, they had little to do. They could not attack the move in principle without being seen as supporting the corrupt and the devious. And they could not attack the manner of implementation without giving Mr. Modi the time he wanted to deal with what could not but have been a crisis in cash supply.
It was probably inevitable that the Opposition parties would speak in different voices on an issue like this, but it was inexplicable that the main Opposition party, the Congress, did little to forge a united front in Parliament and outside. When Opposition parties were planning to petition President Pranab Mukherjee on the demonetisation issue, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi met Mr. Modi with a delegation of party leaders to request a waiver of farm loans. Leaders of the Samajwadi Party, the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Left parties were unhappy with the Congress approach. Not surprisingly, at a joint press conference of Opposition parties called by Mr. Gandhi, only Trinamool Congress leader and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee was at hand to attack Mr. Modi. The other participants were mostly long-time allies of the Congress. The Janata Dal (United), whose leader Nitish Kumar had nice things to say about demonetisation initially, did not participate in a maha dharna organised by the RJD against demonetisation. The JD(U) stand was that it would rather wait for the 50 days before judging the move to be a failure or a mistake. Far from bringing together Opposition parties, the demonetisation move appears to have driven apart parties already in alliance.
✌✌ Statesmanship at Pearl Harbour ✌✌
Conspicuous gestures of reconciliation between nations to heal the deep emotional wounds of wars will have connotations that go beyond the symbolic. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, through his visit to Pearl Harbour this week, and U.S. President Barack Obama, with his homage at the peace memorial at Hiroshima earlier in May, have undertaken this bold and difficult journey on behalf of their peoples more than 70 years after atrocities were committed against each other during World War II. That so much time should have been lost in both instances to put the painful past behind them only speaks to the powerful presence of nationalist sensibilities that invariably distort the moral force of reconciliation. That this should have occurred only now, despite the enduring economic engagement of several decades between Washington and Tokyo, merely underscores their ticklish nature and the strong political overtones involved. In the case of Japan, the conservatives have long regarded any attempt to own up the slaughter of hundreds of U.S. marines at Pearl Harbour in 1941 as nothing but a betrayal of the national interest. In fact, in comparison, earlier visits to the naval base by Japanese leaders were relatively low-key affairs.
As for Washington, veterans of the war have seen little justification in the claim that the devastation caused by the twin nuclear bombings had to be condoled. In their view, the horror in Hiroshima and Nagasaki brought the war to a close sooner than it might otherwise have been. They have also sought to repudiate the narrative that the dropping of the atom bomb was a calculated demonstration of U.S. and western military superiority in a Cold War scenario. These competing nationalistic accounts have possibly helped the current generation in the two countries to see such views with a healthy dose of scepticism. Messrs Abe and Obama have displayed a statesmanlike readiness to rise above partisan accounts, emphasising instead the need to bridge the gulf that neither history nor geography could have narrowed. President-elect Donald Trump’s pre-election rhetoric painted a picture of Japan as a nation that ought to be prepared to invest more in its own defence. The favourable public opinion in both countries towards each other will possibly prove critical in consolidating upon the current strengths in the economic partnership and weathering the uncertainties of the future. Prime Minister Abe and President Obama have shown how history can be revisited in a realistic manner. It remains for countries grappling with their own complex pasts to draw the right lessons from this.
✌✌✌✌ THE ECONOMIC TIMES ✌✌✌✌
✌✌ Absurd to penalise holding old notes ✌✌
The government has come out with an ordinance to extinguish the old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes and to penalise possession of more than a handful of these notes after the deadline of March 31 for their surrender at RBI branches. Extinguishing demonetised notes is perfectly understandable.
That is the only way to legally remove the RBI’s liability to honour the notes in question. And that is the way to reduce liability on the RBI’s books of the notes that fail to come back to the banking system and possibly liquidate an equivalent amount of assets and transfer them to the profit and loss account, from where the government can be paid extra dividends. But why penalise possession of old notes? And why has the bar been kept at 10 notes? It suggests ignorance of numismatic practices. Collectors of currency notes have at least two notes of each kind, one to display the obverse and the other to display the reverse. Notes differ not just by denomination. A note of the self-same denomination can have multiple variants, differing in size, colour, design (that includes the number of languages listed on the note), signature of the RBI governor of the time, inset alphabet, curious numbers and errors. A casual collector might have say, 20 notes each of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes. Now, the government wants to punish them for their collector’s passion. This is patently absurd and calls for at least one more of the U-turns at which the government and the RBI have become adept.
Once demonetised, these notes no longer store value, nor can they be used for transactions. But they can serve as units of account in say, a game of Monopoly. Why not let something that has been rendered a plaything serve as a plaything? If the aim were to penalise someone for having hidden income from the government in the past, the law already provides for it but the penalty has to be linked to the extent of concealment, not to some notes held in possession. Penalising possession of old notes is like penalising possession of floppy discs, old wine bottles or milk teeth. Surely, the government has better things to do than to harry collectors of quaint things.
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