Varanasi peeved, but still supports Modi

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is creating a fresh narrative around demonetisation with each passing week, but in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh, his till-recently-resurgent party is facing the impact of his latest pet project with trepidation.

Even hardened supporters in his Parliamentary constituency are beginning to doubt the ‘notebandi’, which has hit the common worker, the famed Banarasi saree weaver, shopkeeper and big businessman alike.

In the heart of Varanasi, the Prime Minister’s ardent admirer and the BJP’s long-term financier Jagdish Shah is convinced Modi has been “misled” by bureaucrats.

Shah, a Gujarati by descent, is Chairman of the Banarasi Vastra Udyog Sangh. His smartphone has a profile picture of him smiling into the camera with Modi.

“Our business is 70 per cent down. And this is peak season for silk sales in North India — winter and wedding time. Ours is a labour-intensive industry. I have to take care of 5,000 weavers of Banarasi saree and cloth. We give them the thread, the design and we purchase their product. How are they to be paid?” Shah wondered.

But such is his loyalty to Modi that Shah still doesn’t blame the Prime Minister for a decision that he himself announced and has owned up in several public pronouncements since November 8. “The PM means well. He has not been advised properly. He has been misled,” said Shah.

The big businessmen, adhtias (wholesalers), banias, and the trading class are traditional BJP supporters and the ruling party is right in assuming they don’t have too many options to exercise, at least in the Assembly elections.

The Samajwadi Party symbolises “Goonda Raj”, Mayawati represents institutional corruption and the Congress is irrelevant. The Bania doesn’t have a choice beyond the BJP. But he is angry enough to not mobilise support for it the way he used to.

“The saying goes, that if an elder is dying in the family, he will hold his son’s hand and tell him that he should take care of the daughter’s marriage, handle business properly and, yes, vote BJP. So, yes, we don’t have an option. We support Modi but I just don’t understand what he has done,” said Dipak Aggarwal, a chartered accountant in the heart of Varanasi.

On Saturday, at the Parivartan rally in New Moradabad, Modi termed the queues for cash at the ATMs as a “line to end all lines” and advised the poor to “keep the money” that the rich have apparently asked them to deposit in their accounts.

But Aggarwal is not impressed. “The motive (of demonetisation) was to end black money and corruption, and to target credit lines to terrorists. In my view, none of these objectives has been fulfilled if 90 per cent of the currency is back in the banks.”

And now, he said, the narrative around the motive is changing every day. “We now hear the motive was to make India a cashless economy. So, we were not targeting black money? I think a new line is being peddled every day because the PM lacked clarity on the real goal,” he said.

According to Aggarwal, demonetisation is a “blunder”. It is “ill-conceived and unplanned” and will impact the BJP adversely in the UP elections. “It is hitting the people’s pockets,” he said.

Anil Gupta, MD of Gupta Constructions, reels out some numbers to explain his position. “I employ 2,000 workers. Each has to be paid ₹400 a day. I need ₹8 lakh a day just to pay my labour. I am allowed to withdraw only ₹50,000 per week. How am I going to survive? I cannot understand how Modi took such an immature decision. This will sink the economy.”

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