In that place where only municipal trucks loaded with urban waste ply, a car released in the market just the other day came to a halt. It did not fit there, that car. All those who motor down NH 001 – the golden eight lane highway that ran straight and long outside the capital – towards Tollgate No. 7 are in a hurry to get past this spot. Many of course conveniently forget that the mounds of rubbish which let off a terrible stench, enough to choke one’s breath, are actually from their own homes and unfailingly hold their noses tight. But not the man in the fancy car that stopped at the dump-yard. He unrolled his window and stared for a while.
Children busy stomping about in the waste, intent on recovering plastic objects, got curious – who could that be? Must be someone who wants our job, maybe he wants to compete with us, picking trash. But what guts that he should come in a car, joked one of the girls, sending everyone into peals of laughter. I know, he’s come to throw away all the rupee notes that he’s got, suggested another girl. Could be, for does not that worthless piece of paper belong here…and at this everyone shook their heads in assent. Somewhat perturbed, the man got out of his car, as if to cut short their talk.
The man was clad in something expensive and elegant, made of fine camel hide. His face appeared rather unfamiliar to the children. Tight and square, as if sliced off a piece of firm flesh, it made them wonder if he was not perhaps an officer who had come to chase them away from the rubbish dump. Their heads down, they pretended to be busy with whatever they had been doing. Like hens scratching the dust, they messed about in the rubbish, not once lifting their heads, as if oblivious of the man who was now by their side.
Not one of them knew who he was. His was not a famous face – unlike that of an actor, a party leader, a cricket gambler, god’s agents, educational godfathers…His photograph had appeared in a couple of magazines, maybe once or twice, but did not really attract attention. Further, whatever position he commanded, that was not something that the press got excited about.
But though the man was not famous, his handwriting was known to everyone. This man, Mr Kaasunathan, the director of the Reserve Bank had his signature on every currency note, and in this country, no one could expect to live, even for half a second, if it were not for that note. If as they say money goes a long way, all the way to the underworld, well, then his signature too goes that far. It is that piece of paper with his name on it that decides who is a have or a have-not, who’s got more of the stuff, and who’s empty-handed.
But that was all in the past. Today his signature fetched no value. For in Liberalpalayam, since midnight, everything, including the anna, the paise and the rupee had been abolished. If money ceased to have value, does it not stand to reason that his signature is not required anymore? He had not dreamt that this would happen, that like the rupee he would be devalued too, deemed worthless.
The rupee, the anna, the paise – these were valid currency in the country called India until 1990.
But after the new economic lootocracy was introduced there, that is, from 1991, even a beggar’s income came to be calculated on the basis of the dollar. Even a person who was unemployed would not say that aloud and instead would introduce himself as a man who was waiting for a job that would fetch him $500.
In that land, where it had been the custom for people to wear divine icons round their necks as “dollars”, people felt it was befitting that they declare their income or income-less status in terms of that currency. During the reign of the Nehru dynasty, when India abandoned its autonomous nation status and became part of the USA, in fact, as its 42nd state, it also abandoned its rupee and accepted the dollar, which, in any case was known to its people.
After India became part of the USA, and acquired the status of a Super Power-in-the-making, even its dogs turned prideful and instead of barking as they usually did, got used to letting out power-barks. There was also a debate whether India ought not to change its name to Super Power. But since by that time, the actor Vijaykant had made a film in that name, that idea, we are told was abandoned.
Soon as it was suffused with the sense of being a Super Power, India immediately acquired the habit of dumping all that it did not want for itself on some third world nation or other. And so it was that its rupee notes, and the machines used to print them were foisted on to the land of Liberalpalayam. The rupee that had held Liberalpalayam to severe account for the past two decades was now demonetised, and one of the most affected was of course the Reserve Bank’s governor, Kaasunathan.
Kaasunathan had not once deigned to step into places that would diminish his status, such as this rubbish dump. But since dawn, when rather ominously, news of what was to transpire began to spread, he was in a disturbed frame of mind, and unable to bear that stress, found himself at the dump-yard. It was true that the yard was filled with stacks of currency notes, unwanted, unasked for. The children who were picking through the rubbish were irritated each time they stumbled on a stack and would cast it aside in exasperation. In each of those notes, bereft as a bird’s broken wing, his signature shone through.
Even a donkey at the dump, after having sniffed at the notes, and perplexed at the somewhat novel smell and crisp paper, was not sure if it ought to chew on them or not and ambled off. And when a little girl who was defecating under a tamarind tree nonchalantly used some of the freshly laundered notes to clean herself, it seemed to him as if he had been rolled up and used as a wipe. He felt choked with tears. He lost his bearing, and with a sinking heart returned home and complained and wept to his wife.
Che…che.. why didn’t it occur to us, when it was so clear to that child? Instead of throwing those notes away, if we had kept them back to use as toilet paper, we could have saved ourselves that expense at least – was his wife’s response. Realising he was truly alone, with no one to hold his hand, and ruffle his hair for comfort, he was beset with a sort of madness.
The former Finance Minister, Vattippan, was the one that let the situation get out of hand, Kaasunathan told himself.
He was appointed governor of the Reserve Bank when the former was minister. He was always painfully aware that all that the finance minister did, flush with pride at being appointed to that post, did not augur well and was a sure recipe for disaster. But I didn’t imagine that it would all descend on my head – his lament was now audible. However, thinking of Vattiappan’s present state he felt cruel satisfaction.
At one time Vattiappan was very influential. Even when he did not do anything to control inflation which, like a corpse, had bloated beyond measure, the media proclaimed that there was none quite like him in the whole world, indeed not in these seven worlds. The University of Toonthra Pradesh granted him the title “an alchemist who turns even bran into gold” and praised him to high heaven. (Kaasunathan knew even then that like other ministers who had been conferred such honours, Vattiappan too had spent a considerable amount of money to acquire his.)
History dealt a fitting lesson to this Vattiappan, who was now forced to taste the bitter fruit that had ripened on his sin. News spread that he had lost in the recently concluded elections. And it was only by desperate last-ditch attempts – he scored one and a half votes over his immediate adversary – could he declare himself the winner. However, his party was in no position to celebrate his victory. Perhaps his party did not think he deserved to be in the party anymore, for really, what sort of a Minister was he that he could not undertake thievery with the tact and elan it required – and so they did not take him into the cabinet, no, not even as a Minister without Portfolio.
Unable to accept the fact that he, who had been celebrated as the Permanent Finance Minister of Liberalpalayam, was now only a mere Member of Parliament, Vattiappan returned to his native town, rather shaken. On the brass name plaque that adorned his front door, where it read Vattiappan, FM, someone had scribbled in coal, F.M = Fraud Man. Consumed by fear that each time he walked in public, he was being chased by someone who hailed him as a thief, Vattiappan had taken to looking behind him from time to time, as he walked, in fact he showed signs of being deranged. Serves him right, thought Kaasunathan, he deserves this and more.
Though he had slept, untroubled by bad dreams, Kaasunathan’s day began on a twilight note.
He waited, in sheer agony, to know of what government had decided and which decisions would be announced only on the television channels run by the sons and grandsons of the rulers. It happens that it’s the hurt foot that gets hurt again, and even at that early hour, he was served a tough volley by the government.
He had thought that, well never mind that my signature is not required anymore, at least there ought not to be a problem in my being in the office. But now the channels announced that since the old currency was not going to be in circulation, the new Cabinet which convened around midnight had decided to shut down the Reserve Bank, the Mint which, under the latter’s control, printed the notes and coins and also all the banks that transacted financial business under its aegis.
Actually the debacle had started even at that time when Vattiappan was finance minister. He went on about millions and billions and trillions that he did not think it a problem that the country suffered from an acute shortage of small change. He considered coins as so many pieces of metal, useless for anything but to drop on a beggar’s plate. He also entertained a plan of doing away with the paise altogether on the ground that their value was less than what it cost to produce them. He did not realise how the paise figured and was necessary in financial exchanges carried out by the people. That fellow was irresponsible, but I ought to have done something about the shortage of coins, muttered Kaasunathan to himself.
In a country where small matters were carelessly dismissed as so much small change, here was a situation where there was no one to speak of actual small change. On the other hand, people got into a rage and began to fight with each other. On the bus, at counters where they had to pay their bills, in petrol bunks, pay-and-use toilets – wherever they went, they demanded change, only to be told by other people, they would pay them in small change should they find some. And so matters raged on, day and night, the demands, the arguments, until Liberalpalayam reeled under all that tension.
It became normal that of a day, as he stepped out of his or her house, a person was likely to be caught in an altercation somewhere, sometime. Then he would proclaim, do you think I am an utter fool and that you can cheat me of my small change, and the result inevitably was a bloody fight. Gradually 5, 10, 20 and 25 paise coins disappeared until the 50 paise became the lowest denomination of currency. That is people got used to buying things that cost 5/10/20/25 paise for 50 paise.
But that did not last long either, and troubles started again. But this time, it did not remain a matter of small change, as they say, but led to people losing faith in the currency system as such and to them demanding that they needed an alternative system of exchange altogether. In the face of the Cabinet’s decision that it would not transact anything unprofitable, Kaasunathan did not have the guts to go ahead and produce more 50 paise coins. Thus traders and merchants had to find other means to make up for these coins which had become very scarce.
An unnamed petty shopkeeper, unable to furnish the required 50 paise change for a customer who bought a cigarette and who gave him a packet of areca, instead, to make up for it, must have, in all probability been the harbinger of the new currency system, say currency experts.
Since the areca packet, exchanged as a substitute for non-existent change, served those who smoked on the sly, it all started out as something simple. But since not everyone can be said to want areca packets, mint and peppermint toffees, that people sucked at, when they endured a cold, came to be passed off as change, and that was when the problem started.
In the beginning, when petty shopkeepers, instead of curling their lips and saying, no change, handed out these toffees, people endorsed their honesty, and also lauded their own smartness at not being cheated. Even when shopkeepers, who did this now and then, came to press toffees on their customers, each time the latter went out to buy stuff, it did not occur to the buyers that this might actually be a well-planned business project. Since most things cost less than a full rupee and around 50 paise, it became normal for people who had to buy this and that from morn to night to end up with at least 10 mint or peppermint pieces. When one got back one or two of these sweets as change, it seemed alright to suck on them, but when one ended up with ten and more, no one knew what to do with them.
Those who sucked on them just because they had them now felt their tongues burn. And they ended up with the weird habit of smacking their lips even when they were not rolling a mint toffee about their tongues. Further the blue of these sweets stained their tongues and teeth leading to a new kind of stain called “bluride”. The percentage of people with teeth and gum disorders began to go up.
Petty shopkeepers for their part were thrilled that they could sell a toffee whose MRP was only 10 paise for 50 paise and so got progressively emboldened. They were egged on by mint manufacturers who announced that a shopkeeper that could pass on upto 1000 pieces of mint as change would be taken on a free trip to Malaysia and Singapore. Thus, those who had handed out mint toffees instead of 50 paise change now took to handing out 2 when they had to return a rupee, and over time graduated to returning up to 20, in lieu of change for Rs 10 and so on.
Calculating the extra earnings that accrued from the commission they earned on passing on mint toffees as small change, not only petty shopkeepers, but bus conductors, railway booking clerks, counters that collected electricity and telephone charges, even ration shops came under the spell of these sweets, and soon sweets reigned supreme everywhere. In the end, these mint sweets came to form a considerable portion of the salary that was paid out at the beginning of the month.
The thing is no one had the heart to say, it’s only 50 paise change that’s not returned, let that be. Neither did anyone want to wait for actual change to be given to them, for that took time. But, with these sweets, how much ever one ate them, one was left with at least 10 of them at any given time. Anyone who went out and returned home came armed with 10 of these. If there were two people in a family who went out and did things, then of course they had 20 toffees between them, and this meant that a household had 600 to their credit of a month, and so for a year that came up to 7200 mint toffees.
Slowly people began to wonder if a family that spent Rs 3200 on these mints could hope to prosper. On the other hand, rival mint manufacturers, incensed by one company lording it over the 30 crore families that comprised the market for mints in Liberalpalayam, began to introduce their own new brands of mint. As mint in different shapes and sizes began to come into the market in ever larger numbers, there emerged a shortage of storage space.
In the beginning, you had only a few that lay scattered amidst the rest of the change in a corner of the almirah, but now in all houses, there was mint everywhere. From being stuffed into small boxes, they were gathered into tins, and finally one needed a sack to hold all of it. Further, the mint’s fragrance found its way out of wrapping paper and sacks and filled the air in any given household – so much so that it was as if someone with a headache had anointed himself with pain balm and decided to lie forever in the middle of the house.
Drawn by the fragrance, ants, flies and other insects gathered around the mint toffees in large numbers. They found their way past the wrapping paper and began to gnaw at the sweets. Clearly they did not know that they were getting at something that human beings sucked at to get rid of a cold, or when they had a sore throat. As troops of ants found their way to these packets, they decided that it was best they set up camp, and began to build giant anthills inside homes.
In all houses there were only sweets and a large mess of ants and flies getting at them that it became difficult for human beings to move about freely. People saw these insect numbers grow by the day until it seemed as if creatures of elephantine proportions had taken over their homes. Unable to stay within, people began to pour out onto the streets, and started to cook and eat in the open. In the nights, they slept outside their homes.
People had lost not only a considerable part of their income, but also their homes just because there was this small change problem. If homes had to be rescued from insects and flies, then it is important we get the mint out proclaimed the anti-mint movement that had began to propagandise on the issue. If you are to buy goods worth Rs 1000, don’t pay in cash, but hand over 2000 pieces of mint, declared the organisers of the movement. And when people began to bring in handfuls of mint and drop them in shops in place of payment, shopkeepers lost their peace of mind.
On the one hand, they could not hope to re-sell mint that had already been sold once, and on the other hand, which trader would dare take back mint worth 10 paise for the same 50 paise that they had sold it, in the first place, and endure a loss of 40 paise? So they declared that what was sold was sold and that there was no question of taking the mint back and refused to accept the same.
We accepted when you gave us, and now you’ve got to take it, when we want you to, customers argued back. Soon there was no shop in the country that did not witness such fights and arguments. Not just shops, but all places where people had been paid in mint, now saw them returning with heaps of mint, and arguing that these should be accepted in lieu of money.
People began to resist everywhere, demanding that all the mint they had saved up, be accepted as barter, that the shortage of change be immediately made up, and that fraudulent handing out of mint instead of change cease forthwith. One of their demands was that just as Chavez had nationalised oil companies in Venezuela, government must take over mint factories.
Since members of the ruling class were stockholders in these companies, they of course did not wish to harm their own interests. Further, since they had won with a brute majority in the recent elections, the party in power did not think it had to heed the voice of the people. Since the bureaucrat followed where the ruling class led, Kaasunathan decided to keep mum as well.
Some began a non-violent struggle and decided to send out parcels of mint to Ministers. Ministers, for their part, who were used to selling even the shawls, draped on them as a mark of respect, in the wholesale market were nonplussed. For, there was no way that they make money out of the truckloads of mint that arrived by post to their homes, and so they called on the Prime Minister to see if something could be done about the worsening situation.
Meanwhile, mint manufacturers also appealed to the Prime Minister, saying that since people refused to accept mint anymore, tonnes of mint remained stacked in their godowns, and if the situation persisted, they would have no choice but to shut down their factories. The prime minister, known for his tender heart that bled each time a foreign capitalist wept, immediately convened a cabinet meeting. The cabinet was worried that if mint factory owners shut shop and moved out, that might send out wrong signals to those ready to make further foreign direct investments in the county. Further the G 20 group sent out a warning to the prime minister that they could not be expected to sit still, should companies from their member nations suffer a loss. This caused him such fear that he peed in his pants.
This was the backdrop against which government had to announce rather dramatically that since people had more mint – and in different varieties – than money, in future mint would be the country’s currency instead of the rupee.
Kaasunathan was saddened that before it took this all-important decision, government had not thought it fit to ask him, the governor of the Reserve Bank, even as matter of courtesy. All those who had stashed away their rupee notes, from those who treated them with sacred ash from time to time to prevent them from being gnawed by insects, to those who had saved them in piggy banks, were shocked by this announcement. Cursing government loudly and wondering what sort of a government it was, they gathered their notes and threw them into the municipal dump-yard.
Black money has been destroyed within 24 hours, cried economic pundits and gurus, and praised the Prime Minister’s decision. None of them of course knew that mint manufacturers who had made huge profits on their sales had handed over the money to government and received bars of gold in return, carrying which they made their safe way home, to their respective countries.
After the rupee had been abolished, Kaasunathan was removed from his post and the authority to sign on mint wrappers was handed over to the administrative heads of mint manufacturing companies. A notification was put out that said that workers, who had lost their jobs on account of the Mint being made over to the manufacturers of mint, would be absorbed into the new factories on compassionate grounds, but as job workers.
It was also recommended that since all banks had been turned into mint godowns, supervised by wholesale dealers and local agents, bank workers now without jobs could be employed to count mint pieces and stuff them into boxes, and paid on a piece-rate basis.
On the basis of the currency reform a Minister’s basic salary was fixed at 50000 mint pieces plus 600 pieces of jujube. On the same basis a Collector’s salary was calculated to be 30000 mint pieces and 300 numbers of kamarkatt sweets; while computer engineers, amongst the highest-earning in the country, were to receive a tonne of mint and jujubes that stretched out for at least 9 km.
Likewise, the value of all goods, rice, dhal, salt, tamarind, chillies etc were fixed in mint terms. The dollar’s value, relative to the mint, plunged of a single day causing the stock market to turn volatile and bullish. So much so that stock exchanges had to be halted for a few hours compulsorily, something that had never happened before in the history of the stock market.
After the mint had been announced as the new currency, companies began to introduce mint in different denominations. The old 500 small change mint toffees were all melted, and after making and wastage charges had been calculated, converted into single brick of mint. 5000 mints were made over into a single hollow brick and a megasized mint, 10 feet long, 6 feet thick and 15 feet wide was forged out of 50000 pieces of mint.
The day salaries were handed out, mint blocks had to be hauled up by cranes and brought home. When they went out shopping, people had to chip away at these blocks and take little bits to buy things.
The LII Industrial Consortium had welcomed the new currency and said that now there would be a demand for trucks to carry all that mint, and that this would lead to an expansion of the automobile sector which in turn would make for 1 crore direct and indirect jobs. Since new warehouses were required to store mint, this provided a fillip to real estate business and the construction industry as well. Toxic pesticides that could contain the spread of ants and flies and other insects were introduced fresh in the market. Companies that provided armed security guards who would stand outside homes and ensure the mint was not stolen came up in large numbers.
A group that had earlier printing fake currency notes now decided to set up a fake mint factory on an emergency basis. A new group of experts who would sample good and fake mint to distinguish the one from the other also emerged on the scene. The finance minister who was now in charge of the department of mint began preparing his budget, outlining the mint deficit that was likely to follow in the consequent mint year.
The people who had agitated against the shortage of small change and asked to be liberated from mint oppression found out that the state was brazen enough to want to trap them within that same mint and destroy them – and so decided that they had no choice but to fight back. Water, electricity, milk supplies and communication facilities to the homes of ministers and parliament – who had become so cruel as to cast the people from the frying pan into the fire – were suspended.
Mint factories and their godowns were burned to the ground. Police and army sent in to stop the rioting refused to follow orders. Poets stood by and sang of their resolve to bring down the state that had dared torment its own people in order to save alien mint manufacturers. Even the media, which, until then, had been on the side of the rulers, in a shocking move, changed sides.
- Don’t change the mint that we suck into a rupee
- Don’t shut down the Mint and tell us
- That we must make do with mint toffee
- Take back the mint and give us homes
- Go back, go back,
- Looting mint companies, go back
Kaasunathan repeated these slogans that were suddenly ensuing from everywhere to himself. After he had made sure that his tongue was not singed on account of his uttering these words, he repeated them somewhat loudly. He did not have the courage to compare himself with the hero in formula fiction, who, with raised fist, rushes to join the struggle. His bureaucrat brain warned him that should this struggle succeed, he would become governor of the Reserve bank again, and so must make sure that he was not found on the streets, next to the rabble. He shut his eyes tight, stopped his ears and waited for the good news.
Written in 2009, published in Liberalpalayam Kathaigal, Bhoopalam Publications, 2011.
Translated from the Tamil by V Geetha.