Is there cash in the ATM? 6 months later, India shakes off note-ban blues
‘Is there cash at the ATM?’ is a question many still ask Bir Singh, posted outside an automated teller machine on Lodhi Road in the Capital. After weeks of going through the tedium of standing in queues for cash, and often coming away disappointed, many have got used to asking this question before entering an ATM. “People still think there is a shortage. However, we have refills twice a day on weekdays and once on Sundays,” says Singh. Cash is back in full force in the National Capital Region and lining up to take out a little cash is a thing of the past. If an ATM is empty, it is mostly because of technical glitches, not due to no cash being available.
The situation in other parts of the country is very similar. Prime Minister Narendra Modi shocked the nation on November 8, 2016, by freezing 86 per cent of the cash in the system. He declared the existing Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes paper, albeit preserving their economic value if deposited in banks. The entire nation queued up outside ATMs. Bank branches worked overtime and on holidays as people stood in line to deposit the scrapped notes. Some even died while standing in the queue. Banks had parked Rs 6 lakh crore of their excess money with the central bank, at which point the Reserve Bank (RBI) resorted to extraordinary measures for absorbing the deluge. Neither the government nor the RBI has yet stated how much of money was deposited with banks till the window closed on December 30 for banks and by March with designated branches of the central bank, for no clear reason. “Cash is available a lot more freely at ATMs now and the queues at banks have come down drastically. The situation has returned to normal but there’s still some odd days when there’s a shortage, especially on weekends,” said Nikhil Infant, who works at Garden City College in Bengaluru as head of social media and digital content. Prasenjit Sen, a staffer with Tata Consultancy Services in Kolkata, is happy with the pace at which banks have been able to bring back ATMs to normalcy. “There is enough cash now,” he said, adding that he needed to withdraw less of a proportion of cash now from his salary account, as most of his transactions are digital. “I need cash for daily needs like purchasing vegetables and other grocery items and pay for transportation.”
Shanku Mukherjee, who resides in the city’s Tollygunge area and works as an accounting manager at a merchant trading firm is happy with the improvement in both cash availability and denominations. “Previously, ATMs were having only the Rs 2,000 banknote. Getting change was difficult. Now, there are plenty of Rs 100 and Rs 500 notes,” he said.
However, private bank ATMs still run dry in some pockets of Mumbai but there is a marked drop in cash hoarding. And, getting the Rs 2,000 note changed is mostly not a problem.
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