The demonetization of the currency has also a shock and awe element to it: the shock of losing real money and the awe of being herded in digital pen. Cash carries a bad odour. Are you using cash because you are engaged in drug trafficking or are you a terrorist wanting to buy arms and explosives? Should you be flagged for suspicious activities for questioning by the national security state?
Apart from the searing stigma that cash is associated with criminality, there is immense pressure on the denizens of the informal sector to tread the virtuous path to digital- "you pay- we play" pens like Paytm. Also comfortingly called digital wallets they offer bleating sheep solace and comfort from the ordeal of cash transactions. Once secure in the pay pen the sheep can be burdened with transaction costs which swells the profits of the digital banks and also the ubiquitous service tax can be imposed by the government which swells the coffers of a state hostile to social spending.To sum up :
1. Every financial transaction
can be taxed
2. Every financial transaction
can be charged a fee
3. Bank runs are eliminated [vii]
In this digital pen we shall serve with docility and endure "the stifling hygiene of the digital panopticon being constructed to serve the needs of profit-maximising, cost-minimising, customer-monitoring, control-seeking, behaviour-predicting commercial bureaucrats" and tax officials.
Don Quijones at the website Raging Bullshit is more blunt when he says. ." The reality is a whole lot darker. The war on cash is being waged for the exclusive benefit of those who already wield an inordinate amount of power and control over the economy and the people that are struggling in it. And they want more. By slowly, quietly killing cash, they seek to seize the last remaining thing that offers people a small semblance of privacy, anonymity, and personal freedom in their increasingly controlled and surveyed lives. And the way things are going, they'll get it..."[viii]
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