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Comment by essdas | Hacker News Reader

I think the BBC has completely missed the sentiment on the ground. There is widespread support for this. Every single person I've spoken to in the long queues near ATMs have expressed that they don't mind the inconvenience because it will help the country.

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Yes, I personally have been very surprised by how positive the reaction has been. My home has a lot of small shops around ("chaiwalla" tea booths, tiny grocery "kirana" shops, little idly shops, lots of roadside vendors, etc.), and the reaction has been almost universally positive. There's of course a bit of grumbling about cash being hard to find in the first two days, but even those come in a manner similar to how one might complain about rain - taken as an inevitable small nuisance in the larger scheme of things.

One part of the explanation is that these are the same folks that often deal with the small politicians and exploitative moneylenders - so now, seeing these corrupt people suffer greatly from this move, they're full of heartfelt praise for the central govt. At least half the praise I hear has been in the form of "you should have seen that politician's face" or "that moneylender is roaming all over town trying to change his black money".

The problem is that that sentiment will turn sour pretty soon as the supplies will get affected badly. Most of the truck drivers which supply essential goods are paid in cash by their owners. Think what will happen if the payment is deferred.

It might be very sad to say but a lot of these shops exists because of the black money. Some are mere shopkeepers whose owners would have opened these shops to invest their money. Now think what would happen when their cash gets sucked away. There would definitely be a huge loss of jobs.

If real estate is hit badly then a lot of laborers would be jobless overnight. A lot of projects would have to be stalled.

Presently there is an uneasy calm and some sort of schadenfreude but when the dust settles the consequences will not be good.

But then again, by definition those are not the people who are hurt the worst, because they have bank accounts.

You don't need a bank account to exchange demonetized currency notes.

You need ID, though. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12947147

You need a bank account for this process to be convenient and easy. Without it you have to exchange in bits and pieces.

No, but having a bank account and therefore a payment card a) gives you another means of paying for things besides cash, and b) likely means that you don't have your life savings in the form of now-invalid currency.

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