Necessity is mother of invention

Prime Ministerof India’s move of demonetisation came as a bomb shell and suddenly Rs 500 and Rs 1000 rupee notes were withdrawn from circulation.

That led to 86 per cent of the cash disappearing from the market. Even thoughinitiallyshell shocked and taken by surprise the ever ingenious Indians took it upon themselves to solve the problem of lack of liquidity and even found newer ways of managing the crisis.

The survival instinct kicked in. Cometh the adversity cometh the nation!

Proxies in a queue: The most irritating and annoyingthing that any one has to face isto standin a queue. Time is lost, there is absolute boredom and also strain of standing continuouslywhich can lead to back pain and other health issues like fatigue and people faint, injure themselves. We have heard of excessively long queues even causing deaths.

People standing in queuesin Kerala innovated averynew way to wait. They would come to the bank or the ATM. The firstperson writes his name and his mobile number on a piece of paper on the ground and then places a pebble or a small stone (which ensures that the paper does not fly).

The nextperson does the same and we have the strange sight of lots of paper with stones. Meanwhilepeople are relaxing, lolling around, sitting, having tea orcoffee or talking among themselves or talking and texting on their mobiles.

The minute the bank or the ATM opens people would go in as per the pre-determined order. Amazing innovation! This can be practiced all over India. This methodrequires close vigilance and absolute self-discipline. Queue jumpers might find this method disconcerting!

Getting money at a petrol bunk: This nugget was recited to me by one of my student. There are twin problems withdemonetisation, one the lack of liquidity and the other the lack of change or lack of availability of low denomination notes like the hundred rupee notes.

We might have a Rs 2000 rupee note but most vendors and shopkeepers are helpless. They don’t have enough change. This is leading to distressing situations where both the buyers and sellers are suffering.

This Jugaad is breathtakingly simple: The student stands at the petrol bunk. The minute he sees a person about to pay let us say Rs 200 after fillingup his bike, the studentsides up to the person and says “sir, I don’t have Rs 200 can I take this Rs 200/- cash from you and pay your bill with my debit card”.

Most customers would not have an issue: Check out the Ingenuity. The customer is not put into any inconvenience.

The studentgets hard cash (five such transactions and he has got Rs 1000/- in cash which is worth its weight in gold in a country starved of hundred rupee notes) the petrolbunk attender has no problem and right now there are no transaction fees on debit card payments. A true win-win for all!

Booking and cancelling of train tickets: This too has been used by Indians to tide over the problem of getting rid of old 500 and 1000 rupee notes.

They went to the nearest railway station and bought multiple 1st class AC tickets for long distance travel and paid using the old 500 and 1000 rupee notes. Subsequently the train journey was cancelled. Indian railways wereever smarter. It said that there won’t be any cash refunds.

The refunds would directly go into the traveller’s bank account. Even that was okay with the customers. They used up their old currency!

Paying the employee salaries in advance: Another ploywhich was used to spent the old 500 and 100 rupee notes. The employeeswere paid eight months’ salary in advance. The employeeswould deposit the amount into their bank accounts.

As most of these amountsare less than the mandatory Rs 2.5 lakhsdeposit they would escape the Income Tax radar. To that extend lot of old 500 and 1000 rupees notes were used up.

Helping people cross over at toll gates: And all Jugaad is not necessarilyIndian in origin. This particularJugaadwas shared by my bother–in-law Sai Matam who resides in USA. USA just like any other country has toll fee that has to be paid by road users.

This toll dependson the usage and needs to be paid on a daily basis. In USA most journeys are single person journeys and to encourage multiple people travelling in the same car, many states waived off toll charges for multiple person travelling in the same vehicle as an incentive for carpooling.

This meant that if the car has four passengers the owner need not pay any toll at all. Smart Mexicans hit on a brilliant plan. They stood around a mile (1.6 Kilometres)away from the toll booth and offered their services.

The ploy was very simple: Three Mexicans would get into the car. The car then would pass the toll gate. The video camera would capture the footage. The footage shows four people in the car.

So toll need not be paid. The carwould then stop again on the other side of the toll gate at a mile. The threeMexicans would get off the car and smilingly collect their three dollars.

The car owner is elated! He saved seven dollars! The toll fee for a single passenger car was ten dollars.The Mexicans would repeat the entire process many timesover in a day!

This went on unnoticed for many months before it was detected and stopped by exasperated tollgate officials.