Cash less Indians, the new normal, and survival India for Lock Down
Remonetisation could save millions of the poorest Indians possibly running out of money at lockdown end and after On April 15, when the 21-day national lockdown imposed by the government ends , it is very likely that the bottom 47 percentile of India’s population will run out of cash. Estimates are based on the World Bank’s poverty line of $3.2 a day for a lower middle-income country such as India, assuming people are spending just to survive. It is also likely that the population between the 47th percentile and up to 87th percentile will have only half the cash they had before the lockdown began. What this means, in real terms, is that the poorest 500 million Indians would be out of cash reserves completely by April 15 and another 500 million will be left with just half their reserves. These findings are part of my ongoing research on mapping inequality in India using demonetisation data. How bad is it? My findings reveal that the top 1% in India held...