Jhansi gold trade sullen at BJP

According to Anand, who has a shop called Kanak Jeweller, around 80 per cent of the business at Sarafa Bazar had been hit by demonetisation. He said nothing had improved and it might take a long while to normalise. By this time, Ram Kishore joined to air his grievances. “We have lost everything we had. Nothing is left,’’ he said, taking strength from other shopkeepers who appeared fearless.

Were they not aware that demonetisation had a bigger national cause? ‘’We will have to look at our own interest first and then think about a national cause,’’ said Sarvesh Soni, owner of Negi Jeweller. 

Most of the owners, of some 250-odd gold shops there, said they were voting. Jhansi went to polls on Thursday as part of the fourth phase of the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections. Ravi Sharma of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is the sitting MLA from here but these traders sounded upset with the party. Reminded that the BJP was considered a traders’ party, Anand said: “Nobody from the party has come to ask us how we were doing or how our businesses have been hit by demonetisation.’’

The anger showed through the market, which had annual turnover of around Rs 500 crore. Uma Bharti, the Union water resources minister and feisty BJP leader from the Bundelkhand region, had recently said at a rally in the city that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had unleashed a bloodless economic revolution with demonetisation. Responding to that, a trader gave out statistics on how much of black money in cash had been converted into white with payment of commission. And, digital payment were no solution in the gold market, he said. 

Some of them referred to Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi’s speech earlier this week at a Jhansi rally, where he said people of Uttar Pradesh would take revenge for demonetisation when they voted. Revenge or not, estimates suggest some 10 per cent of the labour force, of a workforce of 1,000, had left Jhansi since demonetisation. They’re apparently yet to return.