Calling noteban immoral, Forbes likens it with Sanjay Gandhi's "Nazi-like eugenics" to control overpopulation

Sanjay Gandhi

By Our Representative
Forbes, the world's prestigious business magazines, has characterized Prime Minister Narendra Modi's note-ban move as an “awful act” which is “breathtaking in its immorality”, adding, “What India has done is commit a massive theft of people's property without even the pretense of due process – a shocking move for a democratically elected government.”
Comparing Modi's demonetization move with Sanjay Gandhi-inspired "nasbandi", the top New York-based journal says, “Not since India's short-lived forced-sterilization program in the 1970s – this bout of Nazi-like eugenics was instituted to deal with the country's 'overpopulation' – has the government engaged in something so immoral.”
Disputing Modi claims that the move will fight corruption and tax evasion by flushing out illegal cash, crippling criminal enterprises and terrorists and force-marching India into a digitized credit system”, Forbes says, “Terrorists aren't about to quit their evil acts because of a currency change.”
Further, it says, “As for the digitization of money, it will happen in its own good time if free markets are permitted. And the best cure for tax evasion is a flat tax or, at the least, a simple, low-rate tax system that renders tax evasion hardly worth the effort. Make it easy to do business legally and most people will do just that.”
Underlining that “governments don't create resources, people do”, Forbes underlines, “By stealing property, further impoverishing the least fortunate among its population and undermining social trust, thereby poisoning politics and hurting future investment, India has immorally and unnecessarily harmed its people, while setting a dreadful example for the rest of the world. ”
Titled “What India Has Done To Its Money Is Sickening And Immoral”, published in the Forbes issue dated January 24, 2017, the commentary says, the abrupt scrapping of 85% of currency has led to “economic turmoil” compounded by the fact that “the government didn't print a sufficient amount of the new bills, lest word leak out as to what was about to take place.”
Pointing out that “many workers are leaving the cities to go back to their villages because so many businesses are closing”, the journal says, “Countless companies are having difficulty meeting payroll, as they can't get the cash to do so. The real estate market has tanked.”
Suggesting that it might have international repercussions, Forbes calls note-ban as “the most extreme and destructive example of the anticash fad currently sweeping governments and the economics profession”.
According to Forbes, “Countries are moving to ban high-denomination bills, citing the rationales trotted out by New Delhi. But there's no misunderstanding what this is truly about: attacking your privacy and inflicting more government control over your life. ”
The journal advises India to “fulfill” the “desire to become a global powerhouse” instead of coming up with such disastrous move. What it should do instead is to “slash income and business tax rates and simplify the whole tax structure; make the rupee as powerful as the Swiss franc; hack away at regulations, so that setting up a business can be done with no cost and in only a few minutes; and take a supersize buzz saw to all the rules that make each infrastructure project a 100-year undertaking.”