SHORTLY before the stroke of the midnight hour on 8 November 2016, the people of India were shocked and awed into an abyss of unfreedom and misery in the name of a tryst with freedom from black money and corruption. How the story of endless sufferings was scripted in the weeks and months that followed – how, for example, the declared objective of Note Ban was quickly changed from eradication of black money and counterfeit currency to ushering in a cashless society – we all know only too well.

The CPI(ML) and its mass organisations have been fighting the menace of Demonetisation through energetic mass campaigns and agitations right from day one. After the recent assembly elections, the BJP is busy projecting the big gains it made at the hustings as a popular endorsement of Note Ban, conveniently forgetting that if the outcome in Uttarakhand and UP is cited as an expression of support for the move, by the same token the results in Punjab and Goa must be seen as an emphatic rejection of the same. The fact of the matter is, the people of UP and Uttarakhand have voted for the BJP despite Demonetisation only because the compelling mood for a change of government in these two states prevailed over the discomfort and pain caused by Note Ban. Indeed, if the people appear to have tolerated the disruption caused by Demonetisation, it is only with the hope that the move will curb black money and punish the corrupt rich. In that sense we can say that Modi's pro-poor demagoguery, complete with promises of financial inclusion and digital empowerment, has had some effect.

For popular forces this can only mean that they need to continue and further intensify the campaign to rip through the pro-poor pretensions of the government and lay bare the real motives and disastrous consequences of Demonetisation. In the pages that follow, we have tried to show how the 'cashless' idea followed by forced digitalization originated in the advanced economies in the wake of the great recession and then started to be imposed on the unsuspecting peoples of the Third World as a joint-venture of the most aggressive arms/organs of international finance capital (the US state and the fintech lobby -- the latter represented, among others, by the famed philanthropist Bill Gates – in particular) and their indigenous counterparts; how the government and the Central Bank of India happily facilitated the process since the later part of the UPA regime and how the Modi government gave it a brutal big push through Demonetisation – a measure taken in narrow partisan interests and therefore a bone of contention even within the ruling classes and their intellectual representatives.

We have also tried to study the deeper implications of the whole thing as a novel case of "primitive accumulation" (as Marx called it) in the 21st century and as an exercise in further consolidating "the supremacy of finance capital over all other forms of capital" (which Lenin saw as the economic essence and a defining feature of imperialism). Finally, we have argued that unlike the largely ineffectual slogans like "Make in India", accelerated digitalization forced through Demonetisation constitutes the first substantive and distinctive initiative/project – a key element, in other words – in the evolving political economy of corporate-communal fascism. This program is crucial for the rulers not so much for the economic benefits it offers them – e.g., an expanded tax net -- as for the political advantages of entrapping the entire populace in Aadhaar-based big data.

Simultaneously with the economic onslaught, the communal agenda is also playing itself out in equal force. During the recent assembly elections, the 'Vikash Purush' himself led the charge from the front in UP and the virulent anti-Muslim campaign was carried to its logical conclusion with the anointment of a notorious don of the Hindutva mafia as the Mathadhish of the most populous state with the largest Muslim population in India. All the idle gossip about a communalist fringe and a development-oriented core in the BJP was thus finally set to rest. In no time the 'Yogi' started working on his brief with Meat Ban, which added enormous insult and fresh injury to the festering wound caused by Note Ban, and the anti-Romeo squads. His fanatic followers meanwhile raked up the Mandir issue with renewed gusto, even as ugly xenophobia was carried to its extremes in an area bordering the national capital.

It is only in reference to this political context – the regression from notebandi to the Modi-Yogi jugalbandi – that the economic onslaughts on us can be properly understood and effectively resisted. The Hydra-headed monster that fascism is, it can be vanquished only by a multi-pronged resistance from all sides.

31 March, 2016