“Indian Women’s Press Corps”, Slams Demonetisation : Presenting the Survey Reports Entitled as ‘Demonetization Exorcising the Demon’
PRERIT CHAUHAN (PHOTO/VIDEO SAURABH SHRIVASTAVA) TENNEWS DELHI
Anhad and 32 fraternal organisations from across the country released the report entitled ‘Demonetisation: Exorcising the ‘Demon’ on 7th November 2017. The authors Dr. PVS Kumar, Gauhar Raza, Dr.Subodh Mohanty , John Dayal and Ovais Sultan Khan released the report. Prof. Arun Kumar, renowned economist who has contributed a chapter could not attend the release. The report contains four major chapters, which cover the background and aftermath, what constitutes black wealth and black money, peoples’ opinion and experience and role of media. It is a comprehensive report that covers almost all issues related to demonetisation in sufficient details. The Report is dedicated to the memory of those who couldn’t survive the wrath of demonetization. It begins with an incomplete list of the dead, as till today we do not know how many people actually died and its long term repercussions.
On the 8th of November 2016, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes would stand demonetised after 12 O’ clock midnight. For every sector of economy and more so for the common citizen it was nothing short of a devastating earthquake, tremors swept every nook and corner of the country and reached far beyond the national boundaries.
Anhad with its fraternal organisations and supported by individual experts took a decision to carry out a survey. The idea was to collect opinion of common people about the issues that were raised during the discourse, which followed the announcement. We wanted to record peoples’ opinion before the dust could settle. The stated objectives of this calamity, ever changing goal-posts, the panic reaction, media debates, misery that people faced, politically motivated propaganda and the common sense provided the basis for designing the questionnaire which contained 96 questions. It was a project in which 32 organisations from across the country participated.
The data was collected from villages, cities, resettlement and middle-class colonies and covered 21 states (Delhi, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Nagaland, Odisha, Punjab, Rajasthan, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Uttrakhand, West Bengal) The objective of the study was to capture the opinion of varied segments of society. In all 3647 interviews carried out over a period of one and a half month (January to mid-March 2017) constituted the basis for statistical analysis.
