PARI reports on demonetisation

A year after demonetisation hit them, small eating places in the Karnataka countryside still bear the scars

In rural Marathwada, where the agrarian trade chain is cash-based, farmers are still reeling from the effects of the November 2016 demonetisation – with bounced cheques, poor access to banks, and falling crop prices

Vegetable farmers in Vidarbha had pinned a lot of hope on bumper tomato yields this winter. But a price crash coupled with the post-November 8 notebandi has left them with a sour aftertaste

Farmers in Maharashtra’s Nashik district – where one in every four tomatoes in India comes from – are destroying standing crops on a scale never seen before, following persistent rock-bottom prices since the November 8 demonetisation

When Dalit migrants of Bucharla in Andhra returned home in November for an annual festival, there was no work on farms hit by the cash scarcity on top of poor yields – forcing them to eat less during a festive time

With the note-ban crippling money orders, migrant workers in Maharashtra are unable to send cash home to hungry families. In Adul, Aurangabad, labourers from five states are struggling with a bank system they don't understand and which doesn’t work for them

Post demonetisation, most of the major beedi units have shut down in Jangipur, West Bengal, crippled by the cash shortage – leaving thousands of home-based beedi-rollers, mostly women, with no income

As demonetisation woes deepen, an Osmanabad bank does little to recover Rs. 352 crores owed by two sugar factories, but threatens 20,000 farmers who owe it Rs. 180 crores with public humiliation

In scenic Ogla and at the Jauljibi fair in Uttarakhand, close to the India-Nepal border, traders have been hit hard by demonetisation – while in Dharchula, the last town on the border, people are using Nepali currency

Because the fertiliser shop in Tadimarri village of Anantapur district in Andhra Pradesh accepts old notes, even drought-hit groundnut farmers are queuing up to clear their credit – while jobless agricultural labourers are finding that the easiest way to change their few old notes is by buying alcohol at the local liquor stores

This would have been the time of year for brisk sales at the agricultural markets in Vidarbha. But farmers here are being forced to incur terrible losses – by accepting lower prices, losing their perishable produce, or due to a fear of depositing cash payments in old notes in banks where they owe loan repayments

When the government outlawed 86 per cent of India’s currency, burying his hopes of selling land to pay off debts, Varda Balayya of Dharmaram village in Telangana killed himself and tried to poison his family

The government’s demonetisation has devastated farmers, landless labourers, pensioners, petty traders and many others across Maharashtra