I am a NRI, me and my family have significant amount of Indian currency in US. All of it is 100% tax paid.
Indian Government has provided us no way to exchange currency or deposit it in our account if we are outside India. Modi declared our hard earned money as black money, and labelled us as criminals.
My father in India runs a cash and carry wholesale businesses. His typical customer is a street vendor in some remote village. When they come to my father's to buy inventory, they pay in cash because that is the only way for them to accept and make payments in villages. Most of them don't even have a bank account.
When Modi announced demonetization, his business dropped to almost zero. Two months since, it still hasn't recovered much. His business is seasonal (woolen products), most of it is in winter months only. Demonetization has turned this whole year into a major loss for him and it has literally crashed their Industry, which is resulting in layoffs.
Modi ji gave immunity to Politicians, so Political parties can deposit unlimited amount of cash tax free. I thought demonetization was a scheme, but it turns out it is a major scam.
So you have 6 months time to deposit your old 500 and 1000 notes which even resident Indians don't enjoy as a privilege. Why are you whining?
Previously, we could simply exchange Indian currency to any other currency abroad. But now there is no way for us to exchange money in US.
My whole family will have to go to India to exchange money, one person can only carry a maximum of Rs. 25,000. So six members of my family would have to take time off from work and go to India to exchange 1.5 lakh Rupees. Moreover, it would cost us around Rs. 6 lakhs to make a trip to India.
I don't want any privilege, I just want my hard earned money back.
> Why are you whining?
I am not a blind bhakt. I lost 1.5 lakhs in this Modi's scam, this scam also destroyed my father's business in India.
Modi killed over 100 people and destroyed millions of jobs, so he can write off bad loans worth billions for his cronies.
You shouldn't have kept so much INR with you in the first place. What is the necessity to keep 1.5 lakhs hard cash in US when you can't even use it? Most of my NRI friends don't even carry cash. Even when I travel abroad I normally use International Debit/Credit cards issued by my bank. If there is a dire need to carry cash I normally convert it to dollars as soon as I land in the destination country.
You kept this stash of money without converting it to the dollar equivalent. It makes no sense to me at all and raises even more suspicions. Also, most of my NRI friends have NRO accounts which they have already used to deposit their old notes when they visited India during the demonetization phase. So it is purely your own doing to hoard INR in a country where it is not even recognized for trade.
> I don't want any privilege, I just want my hard earned money back.
In all possibility, you won't get it back. You had all the time in the World to convert your INR to USD through a local money exchanger. But you chose not to and decided (for whatever reason) to hoard it instead. If I were you, I would have converted my INR to USD as soon as I landed in US. I would rather have US dollars than have INR. If I needed INR I could have easily converted it back when I landed in India.
> I am not a blind bhakt. I lost 1.5 lakhs in this Modi's scam, this scam also destroyed my father's business in India. Modi killed over 100 people and destroyed millions of jobs, so he can write off bad loans worth billions for his cronies.
Nobody killed anyone or destroyed "millions of jobs". It is your own doing. You chose to stash INR instead of converting it to USD as soon as you landed in US.
He never said he will "write off bad loans". You are now spreading pure propaganda. He only classified these bad loans as NPA. Learn the difference between a loan write off and an NPA before spouting nonsense.
It's my hard earned tax paid money, and its my choice in what form I want to keep it.
The currency note says "I promise to pay the bearer the sum of one thousand rupees."
The Government and RBI are defaulting on their debt obligation against the promissory note. It is plunder and loot of massive proportion, even Congress wasn't this corrupt.
> So it is purely your own doing
My fault is that I trusted Indian Government and economy. After suffering through this Modi scam; my #1 priority is to close all my accounts in India, liquidate all my assets in India and withdraw all investments from India.
I will never make the mistake of trusting Indian Government and economy again.
Sure you can. But you need to bear the consequences as legal tender does not have unlimited liability (in other words: the debt obligation is not absolute). Because the Section 26, sub-section (2) of the Reserve Bank of India Act, empowers the Union Government on the recommendation of Central Board to declare that "any notes issued by the Reserve Bank will no longer be legal tender."
Also, Section 26, sub-section (1) of the Reserve Bank of India Act states that: "Subject to the provisions of sub-section (2), every bank note shall be legal tender at any place in 4[India] in payment or on account for the amount expressed therein, and shall be guaranteed by the 5[Central Government]."
It clearly states that the bank note will be legal tender at any place in India and shall be guaranteed by the Central Government. It does not say that the bank note will be legal tender outside India and does not give any guarantees. Yet, the Government opened a window for NRI's to deposit their notes (if they have any) with their respective Indian banks in India.
> The Government and RBI are defaulting on their debt obligation against the promissory note. It is plunder and loot of massive proportion, even Congress wasn't this corrupt.
That's your opinion. I don't believe it is plunder or loot. Hoarding of cash (whether tax is paid or not) is equivalent to loot as it stops the money from being in circulation thereby causing the RBI to print more and more notes to compensate for an increasing demand for these paper notes. If you had deposited in the banks the Government would have used it for public good (and guaranteed you interest + principal amount). Notes that have been hoarded are neither useful for the Government, for the public nor for the hoarder thereby putting a huge stress on the overall economy. Unfortunately for you, you fall in the basket of hoarders who paid tax rather than basket of hoarders who did not pay tax (black money hoarders). But you hoarded nevertheless and there in lies the problem. You may say it's only 1.5 lakhs. But just imagine if every single of the 1.25 billion Indians think the same way. Like I said earlier, all my NRI friends used to deposit their money into their NRO/NRE accounts and if they carried cash they would convert to equivalent USD as soon as they landed in US. I mean, who in their right mind would not want USD in favor of INR? Especially outside India where it has no legal value (except in Nepal and Bhutan)?
> My fault is that I trusted Indian Government and economy. After suffering through this Modi scam; my #1 priority is to close all my accounts in India, liquidate all my assets in India and withdraw all investments from India. I will never make the mistake of trusting Indian Government and economy again.
But you will trust a Government that prints "In God we Trust" on it's own notes? Was it not Roosevelt who passed the "Executive Order 6102" in 1933 which "forbids the Hoarding of gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates within the continental United States"? The reason given by Roosevelt: "Hoarding of Gold stalled economic growth and made depression worse".
Also read up on "The Crime of 1873".
Anyone who have cash for emergency purpose is a hoarder? Is cash illegal?
99% of my money is in bank, less than 1% of it is cash; out of which only a small fraction is INR. I require it for travel and emergency purpose.
Andhi Bhakti is not allowing you think rationally. Good luck with the jumlas, now that Modi has confiscated our money... he is sending you 15 lakhs soon.
> So now anyone who doesn't worship Modi is anti-national hoarder?
By all means worship Modi as much as you want and you still won't get your cash back. What you did is sheer stupidity. Keeping so much INR as cash-on-hand in a country where it enjoys no legal status is ridiculous. Even the RBI guarantees apply only if the cash is within the confines of Indian territory. It's jurisdiction does not extend to the United States. That's the reason NRI's have to visit India to exchange cash. This law was made by Modi's predecessors who ruled India for 65 years.
> Anyone who have cash for emergency purpose is a hoarder? Is cash illegal?
Cash outside India is not recognized as legal tender by the RBI. It is not Modi who made that Law. You keep 1% or 10% for so called "emergency purpose" it doesn't matter. Once it is outside India it is as good as a piece of paper.
Which "emergency purpose" does cash become valid outside India? You can't use that cash for anything. It is not recognized as legal tender in USA.
I have never had to keep greater than 10,000 rupees cash-on-hand at any given moment. Even during emergencies. Credit/Debit card is more than sufficient. All hospitals accept Credit/Debit cards. My Credit/Debit card works in any country I travel to. When in India I can use my cards for travel/emergency purpose as well. The only places where I actually need cash is for street vendors and the rare case where I take autos/buses instead of Uber/Ola. I don't need freaking 1.5 lakhs for this. I can do well with a few hundreds. Who are you trying to fool my friend?
> Andhi Bhakti is not allowing you think rationally. Good luck with the jumlas, now that Modi has confiscated our money... he is sending you 15 lakhs soon.
Rationally? You think keeping 1.5 lakhs cash-on-hand is "rational"? If I had so much money as cash-on-hand I would always be a worried man. I wouldn't want to lose it or have it stolen.
There are no jumlas. Your stupidity is the reason you lost that money. I would understand if a chaiwala in India had so much cash-on-hand. That's the reason the Government allowed upto Rs. 2.5 lakhs to be deposited without being questioned (but that will definitely be audited by the tax authorities). But an educated NRI, who is not even living in India, having that much cash is beyond me.
This is a blatant lie. RBI allows you (a.k.a NRIs only) to deposit this money till 31st of March 2017 in it's branches. Modi never declared your hard earned money as black money or labelled you criminals. I'm now beginning to wonder why you have significant amount of Indian currency in the US. What use is it for you there? RBI has strict rules about how much INR you can take outside India (Rs. 25000 per person). This rule was made to ensure that if/when you return to India you have enough INR for lodging/transportation/flight expenses etc. You don't need INR to transact outside India anyways so this whole thing of having a "significant amount of Indian currency in US" is suspicious to me.
> My father in India runs a cash and carry wholesale businesses. His typical customer is a street vendor in some remote village. When they come to my father's to buy inventory, they pay in cash because that is the only way for them to accept and make payments in villages. Most of them don't even have a bank account. When Modi announced demonetization, his business dropped to almost zero. Two months since, it still hasn't recovered much. His business is seasonal (woolen products), most of it is in winter months only. Demonetization has turned this whole year into a major loss for him and it has literally crashed their Industry, which is resulting in layoffs.
I would have believed this story if it wasn't prefixed with your excuse to not be able to deposit your INR stash just because you are an NRI. This whole thing sounds really fishy to me.
> Modi ji gave immunity to Politicians, so Political parties can deposit unlimited amount of cash tax free. I thought demonetization was a scheme, but it turns out it is a major scam.
No he did not. Mayawati and her brother are already under investigation for a deposit of 104 crores into their party bank accounts. AIADMK chief secretary was arrested for laundering black money. More such political arrests have happened (including some BJP workers and party members who were showing off to the entire World that they were clean but were actually hoarding black money).
This argument is also not convincing. I'm sorry but I'm beginning to doubt your story. Especially when you mentioned that you are an NRI and have significant amount of INR in the US. It just doesn't add up. RBI notifications prohibit you to carry so much INR outside India and this rule existed for many years. How much INR do you have with you?
Previously, we could simply exchange Indian currency to any other currency abroad. But now there is no way for us to exchange money in US.
My whole family will have to go to India to exchange money, one person can only carry a maximum of Rs. 25,000. So six members of my family would have to take time off from work and go to India to exchange 1.5 lakh Rupees. Moreover, it would cost us around Rs. 6 lakhs to make a trip to India.
> This rule was made to ensure that if/when you return to India you have enough INR for lodging/transportation/flight expenses etc. You don't need INR to transact outside India anyways so this whole thing of having a "significant amount of Indian currency in US" is suspicious to me.
We have a big family in US, and almost everyone have 20-25k INR for travel expenses. That makes a total of 1.5L in my household. All my NRI friends and relatives are suffering this loss.
> I would have believed this story if it wasn't prefixed with your excuse to not be able to deposit your INR stash just because you are an NRI. This whole thing sounds really fishy to me.
I just busted your propaganda of NRI's allowed to exchange money, but you ignore the fact that you would have to travel to India and spend over 1 lakh per person to exchange money.
Clearly, you have neither have experience exchanging money has a NRI nor running a local cash business. Yet, you accuse others of lying. From your post history, you sound like a BJP propagandist.
You can't go by statistics in an economic move like demonetization this early. The move itself is done keeping in mind the long term impact. 70% of those polled understand that and hence keep an open-mind.
> They have been conducting raids to catch black money hoarders and counterfeit currency forever. They have escalated it recently, but it could have been done without demonetization as well.
The reason it has escalated is because of demonetization. It wouldn't have been possible without it. There would be no way for the Government to track cash to catch these hoarders/evaders.
> What benefit did we get out this whole scheme?
These are the two benefits I directly get from this scheme:
1. Home loans reduced by 90 basis points (and will continue to reduce). 2. Property prices have dropped and will continue to drop significantly as most of the property transactions happened in black.
There are many other benefits but they don't directly affect me (like 10 year fixed rate of interest for senior citizens, 6000 rupees for pregnant women, moving of people from informal economy to formal economy etc). But these two benefits are more than enough to resonably change my lifestyle.
> My family have personally suffered significant monetary loss on our 100% tax paid cash, and suffered significant loss in business because of this chaos. Millions of citizens have hard time feeding their family because of this jumla.
What kind of business is your family in that caused "personally suffered significant monetary loss on our 100% tax paid cash"? I'm curious to know and understand.