Parallel economy

Remembering the dates relating to wars fought among the rulers of various kingdoms across the undivided sub-continent and also those in which aliens were on the other side, particularly Mughal’s and the different colonialists such as British, French, Dutch and Portuguese proved to be a bugbear for school students struggling to get pass marks in history subject at both class tests and public examinations. However, we are reminded about many dates as they appear in dailies of all languages, some of them more often than others. The dates tell us instantly about the connected events. The most globally noted date namely Sept. 11, 2001 (9/11 for short) on which day militants owing allegiance to Al-Qaeda hijacked four airplanes and carried out suicide attacks against targets in the United States, while at just one location, namely World Trade Centre (WTC) the attack caused death of nearly 3,000 people, injuries to 6,000, damaging infrastructure and property worth at least 10 billion dollars. Two more dates marking momentous events, namely demonetisation of the land’s currency with face value of 500 rupees and 1,000 rupees on Nov. 8, 2016 and roll out of Goods and Services Tax (GST) on July 1, 2017 by the Union Government is currently doing  rounds both in the media and circles of chatterati.

Worth of money in circulation across the land means a lot to both citizens and government of the day. While the consumers are wary of the deadly factor of inflation, the government’s twosome agenda concerns a) Current Account Deficit and b) Fiscal Deficit. To make a long story short, there is a currently expanding section in the population unfazed by any of the three aforementioned fiscal factors. For starters, that section is in full control of its economy,  about which people at large hear occasionally — parallel economy.

Forbes India, the agency credited with financial news and analysis covering personal finance of the very rich in the land as well as stock markets has just published names of the country’s 100 richest individuals along with data relating to their money worth, the top ten of whom reportedly are individually worth in the range of 11 to 38 billion dollars. The point is that, firstly they too are unfazed by the worrisome inflation factor and nextly, it is not clear about the extent to which they figure in the country’s parallel economy, as different from the section mentioned at the end of last paragraph. The government is more or less knowledgeable about the source of funds at the command of the fraternity in the Forbes India list, but the rest?

Terms such as Swiss Bank Deposits of Indians, tainted money of netas and babus (some already under the scanner) and unaccounted wealth of both well-marked and anonymous individuals have appeared on front pages of dailies ad nauseam to the point of totally failing to excite the people at large. In sum, the land’s parallel economy is said to be worth manifold of the country’s official economy — call it perpendicular economy!