Note ban triggers windfall for deities!

​Hyderabad: There is no doubt that demonetization has caused indescribable hardships to the common man, but it has also resulted in windfall for the Gods! Ever since the Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes were scrapped, it is virtually raining money in the hundis of all the temples in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.

According to reports, the cash offerings of devotees to the deities have increased manifold since November 9, after Prime Minister Narendra Modi's surprise action to unearth black money. This came to light when the authorities of many temples took up counting of hundi collections.

There is no denial of the fact that those possessing huge unaccounted money in the form of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes received a shock with the demonetisation. Instead of depositing cash into their accounts beyond the threshold and getting exposed, some have chosen to be all the more generous in their offerings to their deities.

Thus, the hundis in various temples are being flooded with bundles of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 rupee notes, with little thought of whether it would be ethical to donate to the Lord in what is not now legal tender.

Apart from this, the usual offerings of the common people, who put notes of smaller denomination such as 100, 50, 20 or 10 and even coins into temple hundis, have also gone up substantially.

Although the banks are disbursing the new Rs 2,000 denomination notes to the people, there is an unprecedented shortage of smaller denomination currency. This has added to the agony of the common man.

The shortage of "change" has put the banks in a fix as those drawing cash are insisting on taking them in smaller denomination notes. As a matter of fact, most people have termed the new Rs 2,000 note as "useless" since it is being rejected by shopkeepers, vegetable vendors, food joints and so on, with many of them insisting on smaller denomination notes for supplying daily household articles.

Due to the sudden shortage of smaller denomination notes, the RBI has appealed to all the temples to come to the rescue of banks by helping them with smaller notes being offered in the hundis by the devotees. Accordingly, the temples have swung into action. They are taking up weekly hundi collection counting, instead of monthly counting.

The famous temples in Tirumala-Tirupati, Sri Kalahasthi, Srisailam Mallikarjuna Swamy, Kanaka Durga in Vijayawada, Kanipakam, Kanaka Mahalaskhmi temple in Visakhapatnam, Narsimhaswamy temple at Yadadri, Sri Rama temple in Bhadrachalam and scores of other temples are reported to be regularly depositing the smaller denomination notes received in the hundis with the banks to ease the change crisis. In some of the temples, the authorities are engaging more number of people for counting the hundi collections.

One question that is at the back of the minds of temple authorities is: Till what date the big notes from the temple hundis would be valid and accepted by the banks? According to the authorities of the Kanaka Mahalaxmi temple in Vizag, the banks had informed them that the old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes would be valid and accepted only till November 24. “We hope the date would be extended as more big notes would be deposited in the hundis for some more time, a temple official observed.