Dense Black Money Black Hole Needs New Data Analytics for Crackdown

The declaration of demonetization did come as a surprise to most. Starting from the common citizens, to the richest in the nation, to even some parts of the government were in shock and awe at the Prime Minister's speech to declare INR notes of 500 and 1000 as banned after a few hours.

The internet along with other forms of media have been biting hard on this case with long queues of restless citizens' pile in front of the bank and ATM gates. For us the stroke of midnight on the 9th of November, 2016 did not mean that Cinderella would have to run home. But instead it meant that wallets and lockers full of stacked money in high denomination notes would turn into nothing but paper!

People are analyzing the case of demonetization from all sorts of viewpoints, considering the economic angle, the political angle and the social angle.

But why was this monumental decision taken in such a secrecy? How will it affect the customers, the citizens, the local businesses, the trading systems, the banks and all of India Incorporated?! Who will analyze all this data of PAN, Voter ID and Aadhar citation, track transactions and be the watchdogs of counting numbers?

Finance Ministry hails the help of data analysts and seek to deploy new analytics systems:

The Indian Finance Ministry has been having a good many busy days especially since the demonetization declaration. Reports revealed that they are looking to employ new analytics systems in place to track and monitor all large expenses, monitor the splitting transactions as their game plan with using technology to track black money within the nation.

Finance Ministry officials stated that they could soon launch a press release which will request for proposal i.e. RFQ. The first stage of the process would be a tendering stage. The officials also reported that work has been going on to install such an effective analytics system for as long as 3 years now.

With the rush of transactions, the discussions are growing more and more serious. They understand and are surer than ever about what is it that the system wants. So, the ministry is on a hunt for setting up a framework of the process through RFP. Until now the system had been reconciling data on the basis of piecemeal. However, implementing such an advanced system will take a lot of work. Such were the viewpoints obtained from a consultant who is aware of the plan of the Finance Ministry.

Some executives of the ministry did reveal that they have been in talks with the tech companies about this exercise. This new platform will more likely further push forward the part f the system that the ministry already possesses.

As per the department, they already have a system that logs in transactions of INR 5 to 10 Crore. However, the new system will track spends amounting from INR 50 Lakhs. They are also looking to see if they can make a new system for flagging a real-time process as presently the data processing system is not real time.

This platform, once in place will analyze data from the CBDT (Central Board of Direct Taxes), CBE (Central Board of Excise) as well as Customs to catch unscrupulous individuals whose expenses exceeds their declared income.

So, it is now understandable why the Finance Minister, Arun Jaitley had said during his 2015-16 Budget Speech that this year technology use would be elemental to nab tax evaders.

Mr. Jaitley further stated that provisions are being taken to manage the splitting of transactions. This will help improve the enforcements by the CBDT and the CBEC and they will be able to leverage the technologies to have access to each other's databases for gathering information.

Thus, it is evident that this change whether for the good or bad of the economy, is definitely a good one for analytics professionals. As a number of initiatives are being taken within and around the ministry which uses analytics technology. To identify tax those involved in tax evasion and black money. The government is prepared to receive information from multiple sources that are installed within multiple channels. If they can meaningfully and accurately analyze all these systems in a proper integrated manner, then this would reveal a significant chunk of tax evasion.

They are also taking measures in installing special fraud management analytics systems that will help prevent professional and opportunistic fraud.

Recommendations have also been made about implementing a Knowledge, Analysis and Intelligence Centre for the government to enable data sharing and ease of analysis between the CBDT and the CBEC.

How can the vast cash dependent population of the country be effected by this move?

The biggest blow of demonetization is for the working class of the society. This includes our nation's drivers, cooks, electricians, maids, plumbers and other laborers. These are people who offer important services in the informal section. This population is solely dependent on cash on a monthly or a bi-monthly basis.

How will they be affected the most?

Imagine a scenario where your maid's monthly payment is due tomorrow. But you do not have ample small value notes at home and also could not beat the long queues at the ATMs and banks. Then they will have to wait to be paid until you get some legal tendered cash in your hands. With ATMs and banks slowly losing their momentum and having shortage of small denomination notes. The problem is a bubble of disaster waiting to burst all over the nation. The whole process rides on the over-worked and very prone to human errors section of government execs and bank employees to allow a smooth transitioning.

But the disaster is even bigger for those in remote rural areas with a lack of resources and knowledge. They mostly are unaware of mainstream banking systems and do not have access to ATMs. These people heavily rely on large value cash transactions and will be crippled until new notes surface the number of people without a proper bank account was roughly estimated to be 200 to 300 million and the number will likely be higher.

Many argue that with Jan Dhan scheme and the UPI/digital payment stack would help rural India to deal with the transition. But truth is it will be a long time before the rural part of the nation becomes completely cashless.

As for those rural Indians who have a large amount of cash in the form of 500 and 1000 notes, but no official form of identification will definitely face a huge problem.

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Eshika Roy is a data scientist working for an analytics firm by the day, and a hobbyist using statistics to answer some important questions of the world by the night. Here in this article she proposes an interesting perspective using statistics to understand the demonetization of Indian high denomination notes.



 By Eshika Roy


Article Source: Dense Black Money Black Hole Needs New Data Analytics for Crackdown