One recent evening, the laughter of playing children filled the narrow lane leading to Kiran and Jagdish Sharma’s home in the Mumbai suburb of Govandi. But inside the four walls, the air of melancholia was immediately evident.
Kiran Sharma, 23, and her husband Jagdish, 30, have been in mourning for exactly a year, ever since their newborn boy died of cardio-respiratory failure the day after prime minister Narendra Modi announced that Rs500 and Rs1,000 notes would no longer be considered legal tender. A nearby hospital had refused to admit their wheezing infant because the Sharmas had invalid currency notes in their wallets.
“My husband had been saving for my delivery since we got to know that I was pregnant”, said Kiran Sharma. “He had all the money. But who could have predicted that the notes he had would become raddi (waste paper) overnight?”
Like millions of other Indians, the Sharmas had spent the evening of Nov. 08, 2016, watching Modi’s unexpected television address to the nation. The prime minister explained that he had decided to demonetise 86% of the currency in circulation in order to eradicate black money and terrorism. To Jagdish, a carpenter, and Kiran, a homemaker, none of this would seem to affect their lives. Kiran was due to deliver their first child in a few weeks, and they had spent months planning for its arrival.
Little did they know what havoc Modi’s decision would cause for ordinary people. In the weeks that followed his announcement, millions of person-hours were lost as Indians queued up to exchange their old notes, and 1.5 million Indians-many of them in the informal sector-lost their jobs as the economy sputtered. Around 100 people are thought to have died as they stood in line at banks, killed themselves in despair when they were unable to access the money in their accounts, or, as in the case of the Sharmas, had been turned away from the hospital because they did not have new currency notes to pay with.
Sitting on the only cot in their one-room home, Kiran said that she has been frequently bursting into tears ever since she lost her son.
Jagdish said that he often finds his wife playing with the toys they had bought before the birth of their child. The crib, the clothes, and the toys they had collected for the baby have now been placed at the bottom of the cot on which she spends most of her day.
An altar above their door holds several images of Hindu deities. After returning from his son’s funeral on Nov. 09, Jagdish had thrown out all the pictures. But the neighbors put the photographs back, hoping the images would provide solace to the grieving couple. That doesn’t seem to have worked. “I have lost faith in God”, said Jagdish, who now spends most of his time away from home.
An unexpected ordeal
The morning after demonetisation was announced, Kiran went into labour five weeks before she was due. She delivered the baby at home with the aid of some neighbours. “My boy even cried at birth and he was completely healthy”, she recalled. The couple decided to immediately take the child to the Jeevanjyot nursing home nearby. During her pregnancy, Kiran had gone there for regular check-ups.
But the hospital authorities refused to admit Kiran and her baby. The staff asked the couple to make a Rs6,000 deposit. According to an First Information Report (FIR) the couple later registered at the Shivaji Nagar police station, Dr Sheetal Kamath from the Jeevanjyot nursing home asked Jagdish to pay the deposit in Rs100 notes.
Jagdish said that before the family left for the hospital, they had gathered some money from their neighbours and friends. They managed to scrape together Rs3,500 in Rs100 notes. “We even collected all the coins in the house but all efforts failed”, he said. Sharma had the remaining Rs2,500 required for the deposit in a combination of Rs500 and Rs1,000 notes. But Modi had declared these notes invalid overnight.
Suddenly, the baby became breathless. The Sharmas’ neighbour, Kavita Chavan, who had accompanied the couple, said that Jagdish began to cry as he begged the doctor to admit his son. “The doctor insisted that she couldn’t do anything because the currency notes Jagdish had were useless”, said Chavan.
“I heard the doctor telling the nurses not to touch the child until the father brings money in legal tender”, Chavan said.
Kiran Sharma in her home. (Priyanka Vora, Scroll.in)
As their pleas for treatment fell on deaf ears, the couple decided to go to another hospital, approximately four kilometres away in Ghatkopar. However, on their way there, the infant died. The death certificate says that the newborn died of “terminal cardio-respiratory failure in a premature child of 31 weeks along with respiratory failure.” Given that doctors are now able to save premature babies as young as 22 weeks, the newborn perhaps had a chance at survival if he had received prompt treatment.
After the baby’s death was highlighted in the media, the central government announced that hospitals would continue to accept Rs500 and Rs1,000 notes for a specific period, and told hospitals that no patient should be denied treatment. The Maharashtra health department even set up a helpline to address complaints with respect to demonetisation and hospital bills.
“Modi should open a bank account for me”
Some people who viewed the situation without emotion suggested that Jagdish would probably have been able to pay the hospital deposit if he had a bank account or ATM card. But even a year later, despite the government’s claims that it had reduced the paperwork to open accounts, Jagdish has not been able to get any banks to enroll him.
“There is always some problem”, he said. “Even, if I open the account, how will I maintain the minimum balance?”
After losing his child, Jagdish’s livelihood dipped. “Because of this notebandi, I lost my wages as our boss was unable to pay us in cash and none of us had accounts”, said Jagdish. “Most of us don’t have any bank accounts and deal only in cash.”
The Sharmas are not planning to have another child in the near future. “My wife has lost her mental balance”, said Jagdish. “And who knows if we again have a child and the government does something like this and we lose everything all over again.”
“We were prepared for the child”, Kiran said. “The government and the doctor are responsible for the death of my son.”
