To consolidate his new vote bank among the unorganized sections, he introduced the Jan Dhan Yojana for bank accounts even without balance. The scheme was coupled with promise of accident insurance of one lakh rupees to each account holder. Two hundred fifty million accounts were opened by March 2016 but without provision of maintenance expenditure. The maintenance expenditure for eac account under the scheme was pegged down Rs. 310 a month. It worked out to be Rs.90, 000 crore a year without deposits to earn from through lending interests.

As if it was not enough, to serve as a tool for abusing and defaming the preceding regimes, the government treated entire bank lending of Rs. 72.50 lakh crore to running industrial and business units as NPA instead of mere ten per cent of the bank lending as was done in previous regimes. Banks were told to recover their lending to all. The directive was a catastrophe for banks as the directive meant end of their earnings on lending. Their insistent demands made the running establishments to put up arts of their manufacturing units for sale to pay back to banks. A part closure of hundreds of units resulted in unemployment on a large scale. Both measures were hailed as corrective to mistakes or end to corruption that prevailed in the previous regimes though both directives pushed the sector to brinks of inevitable collapse.

NaMo had also been using the obscure and unverified claim by an unknown American body that six and half lakh crore of Indian money was hoarded outside India as tax evaded wealth. The very claim was contrary to mentality and practice of black wealth holders of India who do not allow their money to remain idle without earning profits. NaMo used the claim to beat his opponents as handmaidens of black wealth generators. In beating his opponents he also branded the Indian rich as dishonest and tax evaders. No previous regime had condemned the Indian Middle Class as was done in 2014. To cap it further, NaMo went in for demonetization with unearthing thee black wealth as the prime objective of his harsh economic measure.

The Morarji Desai government had as resorted to demonetize the high value currency notes in December 1978 with limited objective to neutralize the funds with Indira Gandhi that spilled over the 1977 elections. Other two objectives of the NaMo move were to put a halt to financing of terrorism and to deal with the menace of fake currency floated by Pro Pak elements to subvert the Indian economy. All three objectives were to show the government determination end corruption, take strong measures against terrorism and strong anti Pak stance. No explanation came to prove how a change of currency would make a dent over evil intent in financing the terrorism. The financiers could easily lay their hands on new currency to carry forward their evil intent.

Not much black wealth could emerge on surface despite the untold misery involved in cash crunch suffered during entire period of exchange. Several Small Scale units depending on payment of wages in cash were forced to close down due to cash crunch as a result of limits to exchange amount and cash withdrawals and yet have not been reopened. Millions are jobless, as their lack of skills does not get them the alternate jobs.

Mystery continues to shroud the third objective relating to ending menace of fake notes. Not a single incident of attempted effort to get legitimate new currency in exchange for fake notes was reported in three months of exchange. The complete silence is intriguing. The Union government, the PMO and the finance minister as well the Reserve Bank authorities maintained a silence over the fake notes as if it did not exist. The RBI claimed to have all legitimate and demonetized old currency back in its fold except small sum of Rs. Nine thousand crore, not even half a percent. But not even a word over the total fake currency detected. Only unofficial and speculative estimates suggest huge amount of fake currency was exchanged for legitimate new notes, as bank staff had not time to handle and count currency presented for the exchange due to high pressure of long queues waiting for the turn.

The measure demonetization thus ended in not achieving even a single objective on the economic front nor did it serve the political ends. The Prime Minister could not convert educated but unemployed urban youth into an exportable commodity in five years. His statement that by imparting appropriate job skills educated young can be converted into eligible skilled hands needed in most developed countries as they suffered shortages of working hands due to their ageing work force.

The first term thus ended with a hoard of economic issues such as growing unemployment, banking sector on the verge of collapse, and the construction sector not showing hopes of revival, the aftermath of the first term appears not abatable. The first female finance minister presented the most insipid budget as the first budget of the second Modi term. It is merely an exercise to serve ends of incomes and expenditures. Only new proposal may tend to eliminate enthusiasm to add to national assets through production as she proposed to impose additional surcharge to their enthusiasm to add to the national wealth. Modi hopes for their enthusiastic contribution to make the Indian economy into a vibrant and rapidly growing but his finance minister intends to discourage it.

Modi prediction demands for their tireless efforts to encourage production in organized sector. But his finance minister adopted a measure of surcharge for large income earners. Encouragement to small and medium sectors cannot attain the growth rate needed to realize objective of converting the Indian economy to two and half ttimes the present size.