'Modi does a Lee Kuan Yew': A year back, this is how foreign media reacted to demonetisation

Demonetisation invited a multitude of reactions from across the country when it happened, exactly a year back. Opinions around the much-debated move were as divided as they are today. While some reacted with shock and curiosity, others lauded the move.

While several world leaders and governments took it positively there were many negative reactions too as a large part of India’s businesses are cash-driven.

The Chinese state media pointed out that the Modi government should learn from Beijing’s efforts to weed out corruption in their own country.

They added, as per a report in The Hindu, that although they lauded the demonetisation move, it was not enough to take out corruption in the country as it would require more “structural changes”.

The New York Times wrote that the landslide victory of Narendra Modi perhaps played as a distraction card against the fact that it was indeed a “politically risky decision to eliminate most of India’s cash”.

It also included commentary from King’s College professor Harsh V Pant who said that Modi was smart to play demonetisation as a political narrative, by marketing himself as a “crusader against corruption”.

British newspaper The Guardian wrote that the decisive win was a “board endorsement” of Modi’s policies, including the currency ban. It said that Modi’s successful framing of the move as a decisive strike against the untaxed hoards of ‘black money’ of the country’s elite clicked with the public.

BBC expressed a rather critical opinion, pointing out that despite labelling himself the corruption crusader, Narendra Modi’s demonetisation move hurt the poor the most, and left middle-class India “burning sacks of illegal cash”. He also mentioned a case in Kolkata where a person settled his hospital bill of Rs 40,000 in coins.

Watch | One Year Of Demonetisation - A Look Back At The Timeline

Singapore's The Independent published an article on the move titled “Modi does a Lee Kuan Yew” to stamp out corruption in India. Lee Kuan Yew happens to be the Singaporean Prime Minister, revered as the modern architect of Singapore. “Government leaders feel that the sudden move by the Indian Prime Minister has brought a new respect for him. A senior Indian government official even equated Mr Modi to Singapore’s first Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew.

The New York Times also chose to focus on crowds at ATMs and also quoted an expert saying how it was a wise move. “The plan, top secret until PM Modi’s announcement, was hailed by financial analysts as bold and potentially transformational for India. It is also a high-stakes experiment,” the article said.

Washington Post in an article wrote -  “India just made a big mistake with its currency ban” by Harvard professor Lawrence Summers and PhD candidate Natasha Sarin writing that: “It is the imminent prospect of notes currently held becoming worthless that has created such alarm and disruption in India. Small and medium-size merchants have seen their shops (which transact mostly in cash) deserted, and ordinary Indian citizens have spent the past week in line outside banks hoping to be able to exchange their cash holdings for legal tender.”

It also added that those holding large stashes of money may as well have converted it to foreign currency by now, gold or bitcoin.

Five days after the decision, Forbes published an article titled “India’s Great Bank Note Switch Appears to be Working- 30 billion USD deposited in Banks”. While noting that a decision of this magnitude would result in “obvious chaos”, it also states that “so far at least it looks as if it is working.” The article goes on to call the scheme “rather well done, a clever plan.”

Milan Vaishnav, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, told Bloomberg that Modi is "changing the narrative at a time when everyone was saying that this government's moves on black money were mainly hype."

The Seattle Times welcomed the move saying that PM Modi pledged relief for taxpayers and small and medium-sized companies.

The Deutsche Welle reported on the budget saying that months after PM Narendra Modi shocked the nation with abrupt high bank-value note ban, the government announced a series of sops to ease the pain.