In sleepy Uttarakhand villages, tucked away inside lush green forests far from motorable roads, there has been a sudden burst of activity for a few days now as people rush out of their houses in the early hours each day, hoping to return home with the currency notes that they can use.
Gopal Singh of Lamdegadh hamlet, which crowns a hill of Chamoli district near the Kumaon-Garhwal border, has to walk 8 km to reach the nearest motorable road. From there he travels another 2 km by a local jeep or bus to reach the nearest bank. For Lamdegadh residents, the trip to the bank has now become a daily, taxing chore.
“I return home early when I feel dizzy after standing in the bank queue for hours,” Sanjay Singh, a resident of Lambagad, another village near Lamdegadh, said.
Over 70 lakh people of Uttarakhand who form 70 percent of the State’s population reside in its villages. The majority of these 70 lakh villagers reside in 10 hill districts of the State and parts of Dehradun district. Chamoli is one such hill district.
A day’s workThe nearest bank from Chopta, a hamlet in Chamoli district, is 30 km away. “Villagers these days leave aside all household chores to get to the bank at the earliest,” Sunil Rawat from Chopta said. “In my family we take turns to go to the bank. We leave for the town a day in advance so that we can reach the bank early and return home the next day,” Mr. Rawat said.
Balam Singh Negi, another villager from Chopta said, “The villagers are under a lot of anxiety. Some of them have never even seen a bank. They won’t be able to cope with the situation if this cash crunch goes on for long.”
Sateshwari Devi opens her tea kiosk at 4 a.m., pulls out four logs of chopped wood and thrusts them into the fireplace to combat the biting cold. At 5,500 ft., amid the Himalayan Oak forests Sateshwari follows her daily routine at the kiosk between 4 a.m. and 7 p.m. even as her earnings post-demonetisation have dipped. “Earlier I earned around Rs. 1,500 a day. It have now come down to Rs. 500,” she says.
‘No schools or doctors’Nandan Singh Negi from Chamoli’s Malkota village said, “We neither have doctors nor good schools... now the old 500 and 1,000 notes have been banned. We trade sheep, goats, and buffaloes. All the money that we had saved needs to be exchanged and the banks are very far from most of our villages.”
At another Chamoli village called Ramganga, demonetisation could not have come at a worse time for 22-year-old bride-to-be Kavita Mehra.
“The marriage will cost around Rs. 2.5 lakh. We had to borrow money and rations from the villagers to get the preparations done on time,” the bride’s uncle Nanda Singh said.
However, Jaman Singh Bisht, also from Ramganga and who contributed to the marriage preparations, appreciated the demonetisation move. “Now we all will become equal [economically],” he said.
