Expect no quarters

We live in rather hardnosed times: no quarters are given and none asked for. And now there’s an official stamp on that dictum. Come July 1, 2011, a small part of India will change forever, and small change will assume a whole new connotation.The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has officially notified that the 25-paise coin, with effect from the above-mentioned date, will be withdrawn from circulation and will cease to be legal tender.

While it may stand to reason that the move was long overdue because the minting of the metallic quarter-rupee costs the government a great deal more than the coin’s face value, the notional significance of the chavanni in the Indian cultural context is pretty substantial.

When Kishore Kumar implored Madhubala to return his paanch rupaiya barah anna (five rupees and 12 annas; in other words, Rs 5.75) in a musical set piece in the 1958 comedy, Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi, he was celebrating a unique feature of the Indian system of money.

It was only in the previous year that India had switched over to the decimal system and coins of the denominations of one, two, three, five, 10, 20, 25 and 50 had been released in the market. Language quickly embraced the new system and truth took on the colour of minted cash as expressions like solah anna sach (meaning 100 per cent truth, drawn from the fact that 16 annas made up a full rupee) became an intrinsic part of street patois.

Numerous other allusions woven around the anna as a monetary unit made their way into the language. Among them was that sly and obviously pejorative coinage, chavanni chhaap, referring to an individual of low status, limited means and questionable intellect. This, of course, was well before the aam aadmi, probably a euphemism for the chavanni chhaap toiling masses, became an influential constituency worth wooing for instant political gains. 
    
Today, inflation has ensured that the smaller monetary units have ceased to matter, if they haven’t been scrapped already. A song like Lekin pehle de do mera paanch rupaiya barah anna would now be a complete anachronism. After all ‘anna, doesn’t live her anymore.

But didn’t somebody croon Raja dil maange chavanni uchhal ke just a few years back? Well, more than nostalgia, the folksy ditty conveyed the sheer futility of seeking anything in exchange for a chavanni. It isn’t worth a shred.      

Indeed, with the char anna coin bowing out of our lives for good, India will never be the same again. Admittedly, the good ol’ chavanni, which has been an integral part of our street lingo and folklore for decades, has already vanished from our wallets, well before its upcoming official send-off. But it has stayed firmly entrenched in our collective consciousness as a reference point thanks to his its myriad, time-honoured associations.

So, now that the nation is going to formally, and finally, bid farewell to the its dearest chavanni, shouldn’t we lament its passing and, with it, that of a whole culture of charming ordinariness? To this day, millions of Hindu devotees offer prasad worth a rupee and a quarter to their deities in countless temples around the country. Where will these God-fearing supplicants get their char annas from after June 30? We can only leave that to the Almighty and his devout flock to figure out in the long run.

In the short term, let us try and put the development in clearer economic perspective. Time was when the humble char anna could buy us a lot indeed – it had the value to sustain the needs of large swathes of India’s population, the teeming, unwashed aam aadmi our politicians are so fond of invoking these days at election time.

That apart, old-timers will tell you that when Coca-Cola first hit our shores in the 1950s, a bottle of the fizzy beverage cost no more than 25 paise, all of four annas. A 300 ml Coca-Cola bottle is now priced 48 times more than that – a reflection as much of the inflation rate (which has hovered around the 10 per cent mark for many years) as of the average Indian’s growing purchasing power. 

India is now a completely Coca-Colanised nation in the vice-like grip of galloping inflation rates that are choking the aam aadmi. Who really cares about the chavanni anymore or, for that matter, for those whose lives used to once revolve around this lightweight coin that could buy a meal and much else? None of us probably remembers the last time people like us used a chavanni to conclude a transaction. Small is passé.

But to this day, thousands of petty businessmen around this vast country use 25 and 50-paise coins in plying their trade. The RBI’s decision to bury the 25-paise coin is, in a way, official recognition of the abnegation of the chavanni chhaap Indian as this nation seeks to stride towards its avowed goal of becoming an economic superpower even as it is buffeted by a multiplicity of multi-billion dollar scams.

The saffron-attired Baba Ramdev, who presides over a huge empire built on a foundation of easy religion-induced donations, has jumped into the anti-corruption battle. He wants the government of the day to bring back the billions of ill-gotten rupees that are parked in Swiss banks so that poverty can be eradicated from Bharat in one fell swoop and the Dr Manmohan Singh government's yo-yos from wooing the yoga guru to cracking down on him, the man on the street, who isn’t worth the metal used to mint a 25-paise coin, can only look on askance, praying for deliverance.

In a nation where a huge segment of the population still survives on less than two dollars a day, we would be happy  enough if we got our paanch rupaiya barah anna back, with all the quarters included. Sadly, the anna is now out  of the equation. In these circumstances, Anna (Hazare) is our last hope standing. That’s the truth. Solah anna.