Thursday, November 24, 2016

My - Rs.500 & Rs.1000 notes - story

It was on November 8th 2016 a bold decision of demonetization of Rs. 500 and Rs. 1000 notes was taken by the government of India. And since then I've seen lot of changes around. Of course, everyone is affected and everyone is made to visit a bank. But what more I see is that everyone is an economist now giving all the statistics and data related to black money and it's effect on real estate business and other sectors. I see people are getting smarter and trying to know all the details of the IT department rules; the rules that apply on their earned income and in the process know how to reduce the tax to be paid.
Furthermore, I see in many the rise in loyalty and respect towards Narendra Modi and the BJP as the honest and prompt tax payers are burdened less going forward. I also see in few the hatred and anger as well which is quite expected due to the magnitude of income loss this decision is gonna cause directly or indirectly.
And I'm pretty sure there will be many more changes that will happen in the country and in the people's ways of thinking and work. Hoping for the better days.

Well, as part of this exercise of depositing old notes, I too had to visit the bank. I had plans to do it later after few weeks for the crowd and noise to settle down but one fine Saturday morning I went out for breakfast to a restaurant next to a nearby bank which made me to adjust the plans to visit the bank as well in the process.

I visited HDFC bank on Sarjapur road on 19th Nov. I was given a token at 9:50am with around 65 others already in queue. After 30-45 mins of wait, I thought of aborting my mission and head back home. But a part of me wanted to check how much time it could possibly take to deposit. After 3 hours of waiting, my patience was seriously tested but didn't wanted all that waiting time to go totally wasted as well. I stood my ground despite all the thoughts and signs asking me to return. Finally I had this beautiful sight of bank interiors and the counters at 2:10pm. It almost made me cry. Honestly.
Yes, I waited for more than 4 hours.

Nonetheless, I came out of the bank with a sense of accomplishment and with a relief that I don't have to do it again as I had made sure to take all the old notes that we had at home. I should also thank my wife and son, who had accompanied me, for their patience and support, who had to bear this ordeal and wait next to the bank all this while.
Please note before you start yelling at me for taking them along, I had absolutely no plans to take them along. It's just that we came out for breakfast together and I couldn't judge or plan when and how to send them back home. My bad.

Other points to note however:
- Bank officials were providing great support w.r.t process and people management.
- They even distributed biscuits to the people in queue at regular intervals. My son had handful of those :-p
- Senior citizens were given priority as per the instructions.
- People stood in queue patiently most of the time despite standing there for more than 4 hours.
- People who stood in queue all the while were getting irritated watching those who got direct entry with tokens. They apparently had collected token early & decided to go home and rest until then.
- Bank officials were verifying the attached ID proof and original document was mandatory.

Guess everybody will have some kind of story to tell post this demonetization :)