The currency Ban

 Jaico George

ESL INTG 100

November 6, 2022

Final Draft 

Essay 2 

                                                               The Currency Ban 

    When I woke up one day in 2016 from my bed, I realized the money I had was worth only a piece of paper. Initially my family could not believe what just happened. The night before, Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi had decided to ban 500- and 1000- rupee (Indian Money) currency notes. Soon I realized that the whole nation was shocked just as my family was, and no one knew what to do. I knew this would have a massive effect on the economy and on common people like my family. My parents were concerned about what they just heard from the news and asked our neighbors about whether its true. The 2016 currency devaluation was something that had happened without any warning, and my family was affected by this. Since my family was middle class, and they were paid with cash, losing the value of the money meant that we were in danger of losing everything we had. 

                                     

    Losing their monthly salary was the first thing that my parents faced as part of this policy. Since both my parents salary was paid with cash, their salaries were very much delayed, and sometimes not paid on time. Hence, this affected the daily daily rhythm of my families finance all the way from buying necessities such as food to to paying for our bills. I still do not know how they managed to meet all the needs of our family. Bills, loans, and our school fees were delayed, and my father had to go to the bank to get the new currency that was being issued by the Government. It took a a long time to print the new currency. I still remember reading from a news article that some people fainted and died while waiting in long lines for the new money. 

                                         


    In addition, transactions were delayed, especially in person ones, and most people started buying goods online. Young people tend to make more online purchases than others. Online shopping was new in Kerala, my state, at that time, and my parents were not familiar with the system of buying things online. It was the first time I had heard about online shopping. Despite all this, we survived for a couple of weeks without going hungry. Most of the time, Online ordering was also a disaster. For instance, it took a lot of time to get food and home supplies declined. Some people tried to make use of this situation and started to do online hacking which made it worse because a lot of people had their money in their bank. 

                                           


   In addition, within a week after the government banned the currency, the prices for everything increased and there was massive inflation. My parents had to pay double the amount of money for basic grocery items such as vegetables and rice. Because of the high gas prices, we limited using the car and we depended on public transportation. Besides all this, My family helped each other in the neighborhood that we lived in everyone tried to help each other. Neighbors who had extra food and supplies shared with those who did not have enough things. This situation also helped us to make good bonds with others and know our neighbors well. 

                                                   



     The 2016 currency devaluation led my family through a lot of misery, and eventually we learned that it was a policy to end the use of black money in India. Even though my parents salaries were delayed, they were able to survive with what we had and what our neighbors shared with us. It was from this experience that my parents learned how to shop online. It also taught us the importance of money, and that losing it will be like losing everything. The high inflation which was caused by this policy disturbed the financial balance of my family. The bills, mortgage, rent and even grocery prices went up way to high. When a government decides to change currency overnight, it can change people's lives dramatically. I hope that will never happen again, and it does there will be sufficient measures for this to help mitigate the effects. 

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