New Delhi: Mounting a powerful defence of the demonetisation measure designed to curb black money, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley yesterday said that as a disrupter of the status quo ante the note ban, along with other measures taken, has set in motion a process of changing the manner in which India spends money.
“If you look back at all the steps we have taken in the last three to four years, besides demonetisation, we have succeeded in bringing centre stage the whole issue of how financial transactions in India ought to be carried out,” Jaitley said addressing the India Today Conclave Next here.
“The question before us was do we continue with the status quo ante of a high cash dominated society with all its aberrations,” he said, adding that the situation was untenable for the fastest growing big economy that aspires to “sit at the high table with developed nation”.
The choice staring at the face was whether “we allow the status quo to continue or set in motion a process guided by the belief that an aspirational nation has to change.”
Cutting cash use
Pointing to the normal practice of purchasing real estate by partly paying in cash, or of companies having dual bank accounts to evade tax, the Finance Minister noted that various related measures taken had the triple objective of cutting cash use, increase the country’s tax base and the number of digital transactions.
“You have to see it [demonetisation] together with the spending curbs imposed on cash, the thrust on income disclosures, the thrust against benami properties,” he said.
“Taking all this, there’s going to be a sea change in the manner in which India spends money,” he added. Describing the move against black money as an ongoing process, Jaitley described the fact that most of the banned currency had returned to the system as a success for demonetisation.
