Demonetisation spectre looms over Dharavi elections

MUMBAI: In the sprawling slum of Dharavi, which is home to hundreds of small

businesses

, note bandi still casts a shadow on the polls.


The slum is part of the Mumbai South Central constituency where sitting MP Shiv Sena’s Rahul Shewale takes on Congress’s Eknath Gaikwad.

Abdullah Ahad, who ran a luggage business with a turnover of Rs 2 lakh a month, had to shut down for two months after demonetisation.

“Even now, my business is almost half of what it once was,” he says, adding that imposition of GST made things more difficult. “I had to stop sending my goods to Mumbai and Gujarat,” says Ahad. The result is that he had to take a massive loan which he is still paying off.

Mohmmad Abbas who runs a small garments factory called Ghanchi garments, too, had to shut his unit in 2016. At the time, he had a turnover of Rs 40,000 a month. Now, he makes barely Rs 20,000. “We need a government which allows businesses to function. We cannot have this kind of economic shock,” says Abbas.

Moinuddin Khan, who ran a small driving agency, too, said he had to shut. “All the payments got stuck after demonetisation and my business was too small to sustain it. After demonetisation, it was difficult for the job market to recover.”