Paisa, yeh musibat!

Scene 1 - New York: You walk into any store to buy a toffee, pencil or cigarettes, the clerk invariably would return you the last cent.
Scene 2 - New Delhi: You walk up to any retailer, shopkeeper or departmental store and you are unlikely to get any change back. Returning less than a rupee is being considered abnormal. At best, the shopkeeper could offer you a chewing gum, a match box or even a condom pack.

When was the last time you saw one paisa coin? Or three or five paise or ten… A 22 year old office colleague had not seen a paisa coin! He tried his level best to convince that he had seen but failed.
The government has decided to scrap the 25 paise coins even as coins are fast vanishing from the market. Twenty five paise coins may have lost meaning in New Delhi or Mumbai, but in small town India, you can still get small denomination coins from shopkeepers. In rural India, a fifty paise difference can land two parties in a fight. In Uttar Pradesh’s town Shamli, an irritated customer shot a paan wallah for charging a rupee extra and not returning the change.
But this has stopped making sense in the nation’s capital. Tales like what you could get in one anna are simply tales. If we say that in 5 paise we got an ‘Orange bar’ or a churan ki goli for two paise, it may sound strange to a guy who is used to going to a mall to watch a Rs 1,000 movie with his girl friend that includes a popcorn and aerated drink etc.
There are no official estimates on the losses, but if you could total up how much you would have lost or the shopkeepers would have gained the figure could be astounding. (Our report just makes a raw attempt).
Interestingly, even beggars have stopped accepting 50 paise coins. Sometime ago, I tried giving half a rupee to a beggar, just to see his reaction. It was as expected. He made the worst face he could and gave it back to me. Shopkeepers say 50 paise “chalta nahin hai”.
The government instead of rising to the situation made it worse by scrapping 25 paise coins. Why has the government decided to scrap the ‘coins’ from the market? Some overworked, self-centered and obviously corrupt babus sitting in plush air conditioned office make rules and pass orders without even knowing about what they are pushing through or realizing the ground realities. The government talks of ‘Aam Admi’ without feeling the pain of the common man.
The could have nabbed scrap dealers or resorted for better fiscal control. A simple alteration in design could have been useful for the economy. But thanx to the government of India, today coins have become a collectors’ item.
There is no hue and cry about it. Media virtually ignored it. I am raising the concern for the sake of the common man, who is the centre of all yet out of focus.