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Comment by yummyfajitas | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure how current this story is. As of a week ago, in Pune and Delhi, all the ATMs seemed to have plenty of money. The withdrawal limit has been raised to the normal 10k/day. I suspect things will go back to normal soon.

One thing I've been pretty shocked by is how people are taking it. In India, the ATMs don't work, people are losing their jobs, but it's just a topic of discussion. You can think it's a good or bad idea, all opinions are tolerated.

Compare to the insanity currently happening in the US - riots and political violence spreading, dissidents afraid to speak [1], virtually everyone is angry. It's quite a contrast to see up close. (I flew to India shortly after demonetization, and came back to the US a day ago.)

[1] Just after the election my social calendar was full. All the secret Trump supporters were desperate to talk to someone and I was the only person they felt safe speaking to.

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The people quoted in the article lost their jobs as the contractor did not have the cash to pay them. The 'contractor' probably falls in the huge middleman category of 'businessmen' who operate only on cash for multiple reasons - 1. No need to pay tax 2. The people being paid may often not have bank accounts, or just find it easier to deal in cash.

I came across many such contractors in my last trip to India, as I had to deal with people involved in a preparing for a family wedding.

The onus here (probably) does not fall on Hero Corp, but on the contractor. The sad part is that, even when the contractor has money and needs to hire people, he will probably try to squeeze the employees on salary citing 'cash crunch'. :@

> riots and political violence... dissidents

I don't think those words mean what you think they mean.

What do you think they mean, and why do you think they don't apply?

It seems like the issue is more about workers who depended on payments in cash (thus untaxed and the source of the black money in the first place) no longer being able to find enough work to pay for basic necessities. The implication is that their employers are simply not hiring as many people to make up for the additional taxes they are paying (this is my interpretation, this is really the first I've read about this, so if I am wrong or misunderstanding, very interested in learning more)

In India, if you earn < 2.5 lac/year (about $3500), you don't owe any taxes. The gdp/capita is about 1 lac/year (about $1500). The worker described in the article is making about $200/month or 1.6 lac/year.

The actual issue right now isn't so much taxes. It's not having physical cash. No matter how many crores you have in your bank account, you can't pay workers (many of whom have no bank account) if you can't withdraw physical bank notes. Further, even if you could transfer money to those workers, they can't buy vegetables unless they can find a vegetable seller who takes PayTM.

In India, most of the economy is cash based. The primary exception is in major cities where credit cards and PayTM (think Indian version of WeChat payments) have suddenly become vital. Suddenly many autowales and small restaurants have PayTM QR codes. Even some vegetable sellers take PayTM!

Sorry, I didn't think the issue was the poor not paying taxes. Perhaps this is just me applying US tax paradigms to India, but what seemed to be the issue to me was employers paying those workers in cash, thus avoiding any taxes the employer would need to pay. Your point on not being able to pay workers in cash when actual cash is just not available is a good one though, and definitely helped me in understanding what is going on a bit more, thanks.

>The implication is that their employers are simply not hiring as many people to make up for the additional taxes they are paying (this is my interpretation, this is really the first I've read about this, so if I am wrong or misunderstanding, very interested in learning more) reply

That interpretation (hiring is less due to having to pay more tax) is likely only a minor part of it. The much bigger issue is likely the lack of actual physical cash since the demonetization started, which is a few months ago now. (Things have started improving only recently.) Lots of people in India - probably the majority - do not use electronic methods of money transfer (due to being illiterate or computer-illiterate, old-fashioned, being in remote areas or other reasons), so depend heavily on cash.

IOW, yummyfajitas' statement:

>It's not having physical cash.

is right.

I'm not sure I see that as a positive thing. In my opinion the people SHOULD be upset in both cases. Horrible decisions by the government caused ATMs to not work and you lose your job and it is just a mild topic for discussion???

There was a documentary on the BBC about India a couple of years ago. In one scene a worker the filmmakers had been following got fired from his office job. He calmly left the building, went down the street and immediately got a new job in a scrapyard working as a welder after spending two minutes demonstrating that he could indeed weld. Not sure how representative that is but in that sort of world losing one's job really wouldn't be such a big deal.

it's a bizarre definition of 'dissident' that includes people that voted for the president of the us.

The cars in my neighborhood were festooned with Clinton bumper stickers. If I'd put a Trump sticker on my car and it was only keyed I'd consider myself lucky. Trump supporters may not have been dissidents in relation to the government, but in many places you have to worry about the mob.

Interesting revenge tactic: put Trump stickers not on your car but on a Clinton supporter's car....

And when a window was smashed in on that car, would the owner decry the impulse to damage property belonging to someone with different political leanings, or would the owner (as we saw in the Rodney King riots) be upset because he got his window smashed in when he wasn't even a Trump supporter?

I fear the latter.

The US doesn't have the freedoms people have in India.

Surely you must visit India and say that after a week as one among the citizens and not as a white tourist.

There is a different sense of freedom that I believe the person you replied to is alluding to. The cultural and social norms may be more ingrained in India, but there is a less litigious society that overlooks or ignores small offenses, or may not even have regulations preventing many things that would be illegal in the US from taking place. It's not necessarily desirable freedom, but freedom nonetheless.

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