Monday 3 April 2017

Cashlessness is illegal & undermines citizen's liberty


  • Cash is coined liberty, fundamental right of citizens.
  • Cash is an asset, without any intrinsic value but guaranteed by Reserve Bank of India, for its full value. On other hand cashless transactions comes with a hefty transaction fees that impoverishes citizens.
  • Cash is a form of wealth and citizen's right to hold any form of wealth can't be constrained except by a process of law.
  • Banks are commercial enterprises and cash deposited in banks are never guaranteed beyond a certain small value by RBI. Government can't compel its citizens to keep their wealth with these commercial enterprises and violate constitution and principles of democracy.
  • Cashlessness grants freedom to banks to use their entire cash as they like without any obligations to depositors, except showing credit/debit balances in their accounts. 
  • The bank's Cash Reserve Ratio (CRR) obligation will gets nullified. It may reduce their lending rates but reckless advances will increase its NPAs and bankruptcy.
  • Run on banks will gets eliminated no matter what ever non sense banks do. They would not be answerable to depositors at all.
  • Emboldened banks will tend towards lower interest & negative interest regimes that will rob off depositor's wealth completely over time. 
  • With cash banned, rulers & bureaucrats will get enabled to track citizen's activities, undermine privacy rights and have complete control on citizen's lives. Unthinkable in a democracy.
  • Their justification to fight tax evasion, black money menace, fake currency, terrorism finances, smuggling etc by tracking transactions is just trash. There are many avenues to fight these menaces without intruding citizen's privacy and respecting individual rights. All these anti-social elements will just not give up or allow authorities to catch them but will modify their activities with much greater ingenuity and continue. They have their own godfathers among politicians and bureaucrats who will help them for a price.
  • Finally, no democratic country will ever think off banning cash altogether. Only authoritarian regimes can ever think of such anti citizen moves.


Money is coined liberty, and so it is ten times dearer to a man 
who is deprived of freedom. If money is jingling in his pocket, 
he is half consoled, even though he cannot spend it. ― Fyodor Dostoevsky

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