Home sales have flatlined in the month since the Nov. 8 announcement. Daily uproar by opposition parties has brought Parliament to a standstill. Tourists have been stuck mid-voyage, unable to tip or buy souvenirs. And there have been long, sometimes tense lines at banks and ATMs.
The lives of the poor, in particular—many of whom depend on irregular, off-the-books employment paid in cash—have been upended.
Recently, after weeks of fruitless job-hunting near his Delhi slum, onetime factory worker Vijay Bhardwaj was contemplating riding out the crunch in his native farming village. Not that there is much money to be made there, either. “If there was work in the village, then I wouldn’t have come here,” he said.
In the gritty western city of Morbi, a major hub for makers of kitchen and bathroom tiles, production is down 30%, said Nilesh Jetpariya, president of the local ceramic-industry association. Short on cash to pay laborers and truckers, around a third of the city’s 650 tile factories are shut.
