One of the first things my uptight middle class father taught me (and I guess most parents taught their children in those days) was never to borrow money. In today’s terminology, that would mean: Avoid debt. This is almost the same as saying: Stop doing all business. For the world we currently live in is driven by money, usually borrowed. And, as we all know by now, it’s no longer possible to do any kind of business today without going out and borrowing money. Tata Steel has a debt of Rs 75,000 crore. My local bhelpuriwala gets by on a debt of Rs 750.

We have now gone a step further and made debt not just a part of our business but also a part of our everyday lives. So, when someone comes to me for a job these days, the first thing she or he says is: I have EMIs of around so much to pay each month. So please ensure my net take home takes care of that.

In short, debt rules our lives today. We are all neck deep in it. From paying EMIs for our cars and flats, smart phones and gaming laptops to the myriad monthly bills for newspapers and magazines, electricity, groceries, laundry, wifi, DTH or cable, Amazon or Netflix. Even the ecommerce sites are now making it easier for us to buy all the stuff we no longer need (like watches, cameras and TVs that are getting bigger and bigger as more and more people switch over to watching content on cell phones) by offering them on, yes, you are right, all kinds of fancily described EMIs. I have still no idea what the acronym stands for but I know it’s hugely burdensome for those who live under its dead weight.

Debt, wise economists say, is on the verge of bringing mighty China to its knees. And, in recent years, India, with a population once famous for their propensity to save money from their meager incomes, has now chucked all discretion to the winds and is on a huge buying spree. This, in turn, has brought all kinds of products and brands to a marketplace very different from what we grew up in.

Today the sex toys market is $230 million, growing at 34.8%; higher than the growth rate for the $140 billion education market. And yes, debt drives them both. People are borrowing money from wherever they can to learn, travel, have fun, dress better and eat enough to make bariatric surgery a huge business. No one cares that every spend they incur has an agonizing indirect tax component which hurts the poor as much as the rich.

The Government knows this. They know how much we love our debt. So, to further encourage it, it has been hurrying to bring down interest rates. Home loans are now 20% cheaper than when I bought my flat some years ago. I can buy my car (and drive it around) on a loan that charges me no EMI for a full year. My iPhone offers me enough seductive deals to want to upgrade it every year. And for every other need of mine, there’s a credit card ready to lend me money instantly. (Though it does require some gumption, and I guess stupidity, to borrow money at 3% a month. Shylock would have been more reasonable.)

My father (had he been alive) would have been surprised to know that saving money is now considered seriously infra dig. The Government actually discourages it. So if you save money from your tax paid income and earn some interest on that saving, you pay tax again on it at exactly the same rate. My wife learnt a lesson recently when the so-called big currency notes were demonetized. She had squirreled away some petty cash over 35 years from her monthly kharcha and, like most women do, hidden it. The moment demonetization was announced, she nearly collapsed.

Luckily, a kind-hearted grocer gave her a year’s stock of provisions for her old notes, at a premium. A medical store also helped. So now we have two years’ stock of medicines that we may or may not use and a vast stock of groceries stacked at home (for us and the rats) instead of a few fully tax paid notes she had hidden from us.

I guess it all began because some bureaucrat told the government that saved money is actually black money if it is not kept in a bank. It’s a silly argument. I know many people, not necessarily from small towns or villages, who like holding cash and never realized that one day we would have a regime that so hated cash it was ready to hurt millions of innocent Indians in the attempt to catch a few tax evaders who are possibly sitting overseas and laughing. For no serious tax evader keeps cash idling at home.

As for the poor, they keep cash because they have no real option. Have you seen how banks treat them when they go to open an account? And even if they manage to open an account with your help or mine, the annual KYCs are meant to kill. Even I, after years of frustration, have finally hired a full time guy to take care of our KYC requirements.

The truth is the Rs 6 trillion crore bad loans in our banks come from a mere handful of willful defaulters. They need to be taken down. Not the whole economy