Crackdown On Black Market Causes Cash Crunch In India NPRPeople in India are camped out in long lines at banks seeking to exchange high denomination currency that the government has withdrawn from circulation. DAVID GREENE, HOST In India, a nationwide cash crunch has brought economic life in streets and villages to a virtual standstill. This is because last week, the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi invalidated 5. These are the countrys largest. NPRs Julie Mc. Carthy is on the line from New Delhi. LATEST HEADLINES Coco Strikes Gold at Black Friday Box Office, Tops Justice League 17 hours ago Paul Thomas Anderson Unveils Daniel DayLewis Fashion. Directed by Darren Aronofsky. With Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Vincent Cassel, Winona Ryder. A committed dancer wins the lead role in a production of Tchaikovskys. Julie, good morning. JULIE MCCARTHY, BYLINE Good morning. GREENE Now, let me get this straight. Mission 7 A Crack in the Slab Dishonored 2 Welcome to IGNs guide for Dishonored 2. This Walkthrough will seek to guide you through the dangerous land. ABC has put in development Black Dont Crack, a multicamera femaledriven comedy from How To Get Away With Murder star Viola Davis. FXs new dramatic series is about the origins of the crack epidemic in Los Angeles. Executive Producer John Singleton has made a career of telling stories. Crack Black In The Back 2' title='Crack Black In The Back 2' />Eliminating these banknotes this was supposed to crack down on tax evaders and other people who keep their assets in cash. But it sounds like it has had a lot of unintended consequences. MCCARTHY Yes, indeed. You know, you cant pass an open bank branch on the streets today and not see people snaking out the door, and theyre not happy. One man, who had been there since 5 in the morning, told me he moved 2. And it was 2 oclock in the afternoon. Then a fight broke out because everybody was so mad about people pushing ahead in the lines. You know, theres disarray. The ATM machines are empty. First Crack Cafe Great little breakfast find Not an easy place to locate in the parking lot. Flex Builder Mac Torrent on this page. The breakfast menu was not too big but had all the. And, you know, with this crackdown on this unaccounted for money, the government effectively wiped out 8. Indias cash in terms of value. And replenishing that, as you can imagine, is an administrative nightmare. Now, a couple of housewives in line said, look, you know, its for a good cause. Theres no problem. But a woman behind them who seemed a bit more representative said, hold on, this is no minor disruption. Her business, which is supplying IT parts, has been closed for a week. Shes got no cash to get to work. Shes scraping with the food there is at home. Its the common man, she said, whos bearing this burden. GREENE How did the government not realize that this would really affect ordinary people and not just rein in tax evaders MCCARTHY Well, thats the question. I mean, how well thought out was it And they seem to have forgotten one key factor cash is king in India. Ninety seven percent of all transactions are in cash. People dont have it. This is the problem. And millions of these Indians standing in line, David, are losing a days wages just being there. People cant pay their bills. Small businesses, who are the bulwark of this economy, theyre paralyzed because people have stopped shopping. You know, people with relatives in the hospitals are stuck. These are big bills they have to pay. And this is not a credit card country. The government is calling on people to withstand this inconvenience for the greater good. But one security guard in line said to me, look, black money, white money, I cant get my money. So it appears to a lot of people that this whole currency switch has been a bit bungled. GREENE Well, to say the least. I mean, what about the bad guys that the governments going afterIs there any success in what theyve tried here MCCARTHY Well, you know, we dont know that yet. And the calculation has been that, look, if you pull from circulation, these 5. And you begin to hunt down what could be billions of dollars stashed in Indias underground economy. For example, black money is a major factor in propping up real estate prices because thats where a lot of this unaccounted money ends up, in property, in gold, in jewelry, in fancy cars. So this will not be going after the super rich, maybe the tier beneath them. And that would include political parties. So watch that space. GREENE Julie, what if Im sitting here and Im not trafficking in black money, and I just have some of these old 5. I just want to get them exchanged I mean, is that possible MCCARTHY Laughter Yeah, you can. You can if you show up with more than 2. But if you can account for that, youre OK. If you cannot account for it, youre going to face a 2. Now, you know, Modi is gambling that this whole crackdown is going to help burnish his political standing. But in the meanwhile, the physical capacity of the banking system and the peoples patience is being seriously strained by all of this. GREENE OK. Quite an economic mess in India right now. NPRs Julie Mc. Carthy speaking to us from New Delhi. Julie, thanks. MCCARTHY Thank you. Copyright 2. 01. NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb. Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record.