A cold, a sick economy = rupee, rupee, who's got a rupee!

December 20, 2016

I have been in bed for three days now. My cold took a turn for the worse just as I was getting better. I had a bad night of sleep on Friday and now have some kind of infection. So I am on drugs and bed rest in hope of a quick recovery. Given how hard the beds are here I also am taking ibuprofen to help with back pain from being is bed so much. Yesterday I saw a doctor who prescribed three meds. The doctor visit was 100 rupees…that is $1.50…yes I do have the decimal in the right place. I couldn’t help but laugh when he told me. I told him it would be more like $100 in the US and he replied ‘Yes but India isn’t like the US’. HA! That’s an understatement.

We are nearing a panic mode over rupees here. I mentioned earlier that the government on Nov 8 demonetized 500 and 1000 rupee notes causing a real problem. It gets worse by the week. We found out last week that the banks are not replenishing the ATMS which is our only way to get cash here as we do not have an Indian bank account. The banks stopped refilling the ATMs because non customers could withdraw rupees and daily the ATMs ran out of cash. So the banks stopped refilling them but their customer could cash checks inside the bank to get cash. We are rupee-less as a result. We do not have enough to pay our staff at the end of the month.

Ron visited a bank with a foreign exchange office and was told they would NOT take US dollars in cash in exchange for rupees, only wire transfers. Incredible India.  We have lots of US dollars because we sold our car and asked for US dollars instead of rupees to avoid a major problem of converting hundreds of thousands of rupees before we left the country. We were shocked to discover how hard it is to exchange the dollars. There are multiple places besides banks that do foreign exchange but NONE of them have any rupees because the government did not print replacement currency before they implemented the new policy!!!!!!!!! I think you are beginning to see the picture here and how the government failed to see the problem with implementation when they did not preprint and supply new currency to replace the currency they demonetized. I feel badly for all the small businesses that are closing or larger companies that are laying off workers because no one has cash to be spending.

I am an optimist by nature and I would have to say I am naive sometimes but I am hopeful that by the end of December they have printed and distributed enough currency that this nightmare goes away. Ron scoffs at me for being so hopeful.

 December 21, 2016

 Happy Winter Solstice, one of my favorite days of the year. It means the days lengthen and there is more daylight. We are still enjoying temps in the mid to high 80’s and sun every single day. I absolutely love living in the Grayt NW of the US but the winters are so gray for so long. It never bothered me much until we lived in Sri Lanka which is five degrees above the equator and we had four cloudy days in 14 months! So now in the winter we often leave the NW for sunnier climes. Our days and evenings here are so much like the Portland summers: chilly mornings and comfortable days. We were told yesterday it gets cold here in January but who knows what that means. When we walk in the mornings around 6:30our neighbors who are walking are bundled up in sweaters, stocking hats, neck scarves, and jackets. We are in our t-shirts. I am not sure they know what cold is here but they make up for it by truly knowing hot!!!

Yesterday Rahul and Ron paid a visit to Rahul’s bank to talk to the manager as to what options we had for getting rupees. Today a foreign exchange agent is supposed to come to Ron’s office between 11-2 to exchange $1400 dollars for rupees which should get us through until time to leave. We have our fingers crossed. If this fails for any reason then we can wire money to Rahul’s account and use his account as our ATM.

The demonetization plan/implementation is taking some interesting turns. For starters the finance ministry keeps changing the rules and they are getting worse by the week. Now people cannot deposit more than 5,000 rupees of the old money without being interviewed by two bank employees asking why. Once they approve of the customer’s reason they will approve the deposit. Just think of the staff time involved in that transaction. OY! Originally the deadline was Dec 31^st to deposit or exchange any old notes but that was one of the rules that got changed. Today the minister said people should deposit all their old notes at once. Just a little problem with those two rules. The worse one now is you cannot withdraw more that 8,000 rupees from your own account. Yesterday a man filed a police report because he submitted a check for withdrawal of 24,000 rupees and was told to come back in the afternoon. When he returned he was told they could only let him withdrawal 8,000 at a time and to write three checks. I think you can see how arbitrary the rules are and they literally change bank to bank and day to day. All at the inconvenience of the depositors.  My favorite recent story came from a small village where the villagers ordered every employee out of the bank and they locked the door with their own lock because the bank had no money to meet their needs. It has been 41 days since this policy was implemented and we are just beginning to see people who had been patient long enough and are now protesting one way or the other.

  

As you would expect this has impacted tourism greatly. Booking are down 65% and foreign bookings are down 40-45%. I have no idea how a tourist can get rupees for traveling in India when ATMs are empty! It is totally nuts to me. So today I will pray to the two million Hindu gods and goddesses that our foreign exchange guy shows up with rupees in hand. Wish us luck.

Aha. It is done. We have rupees, close to enough to take us through our departure. Yippee!!!!