【Australia】

Selfie with a currency note is Australiaa thing now in India, and you’re going to see a lot of it in the next few days.

Millions of Indians are taking a break today from their office to visit banks and exchange the recently withdrawn currency notes with new bills that have gone into circulation from today. Naturally, many are taking a selfie with the new notes — hey you don’t get new currency notes in the country everyday.

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Banks across the country have hundreds of people, in some places, queued outside today. People formed lines hours before the bank had opened. The rush comes as people run out of cash and take immediate actions to deposit the now-withdrawn currency notes.

In a surprise announcement earlier this week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that the government is scrapping currency notes in Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 denominations. At the time, these were the biggest denomination currency notes in India and with massive penetration in the market. According to Reserve Bank of India, more than 80 percent of currency in circulation by value in 2014-15 were Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes.

The government also announced that banks will remain closed on Wednesday, sending a panic to hundreds of millions of Indians who rushed at ATM (instant money machine) at night in hope to get some cash out. The move comes as the Indian government bolsters its attempts to curb black money, counterfeit, corruption, and several terrorism activities that often involve stash of unreported cash.

Though the general consensus among many is that this move has the potential to curb corruption, it also quickly became apparent that lives of hundreds of millions of people with low to mid-level income was to be severely impacted for the next few weeks as they struggle to get access to cash.

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