The pavement adjacent to the Reserve Bank of India’s eastern regional headquarters in Dalhousie, central Calcutta, has been serving as the temporary address of 45-year old Parbati Dolui mother of a teenaged daughter and wife to a daily wage earner working at a neighbourhood utensil shop, for nearly a month now. A resident of Uluberia in Howrah, Parbati has been braving the winter chills to exchange Rs 2000 banknotes on a daily basis at the RBI following the central bank’s announcement that the notes continue to remain legal tender.

Except there’s a catch in this seemingly normal statement: the money is not Parbati’s and she has no idea who it belongs to.

Parbati is just one among the hundreds who queue up before the RBI office daily to deposit Rs 2000 banknotes in exchange for a commission handed to her by an “agent”. All she requires to submit before the bank is her Aadhar Card credentials. The agents, Parbati claims, are mostly invisible and act as conduits for the supply of the notes from their original owner. “Our commission varies between Rs 500 to Rs 800 for every Rs 10,000 we deposit at the bank. The agents receive double the amount we receive,” she told The Telegraph Online.

Depositors outside RBI.

Parbati confessed to have deposited and exchanged more than Rs 2 lakhs all by herself during the course of her stay in the city where she arrived post Kali Puja. “I heard about this trade from my husband who works in this neighbourhood and came rushing for some extra bucks. I haven’t returned home yet,” she said with a smile writ large on her face.

Every individual this correspondent randomly spoke to admitted they were depositing money belonging to others in exchange for a commission and insisted they never met the original owner of the cash they were handling. Interestingly, all of them were either residents of the city dwelling in pavements and shanties or from economically weak backgrounds residing in neighboring districts of Howrah, Hooghly, North and South 24 Parganas.

The phenomenon taking place in broad daylight, often before the prying eyes of the police, for over two months now merits the question on whether unaccounted money is being legally brought back into the system and whether black money hoarders have lapped up the opportunity of currency exchange provided by the country’s central bank.

Depositors wait on the other side of the road after being chased away by police post designated deposit hours.

“The total value of Rs 2000 banknotes in circulation, which amounted to Rs 3.56 lakh crore as at the close of business on May 19, 2023 when the withdrawal of Rs 2000 banknotes was announced, has declined to Rs 9,760 crore as at the close of business on November 30, 2023. Thus, 97.26% of the Rs 2000 banknotes in circulation as on May 19, 2023, has since been returned,” the RBI stated in an official communication made on December 1.

“Ours is a job based on trust. The agents bring the money and give us our commission. The commission rate is directly proportional to the volume of notes to be exchanged on that particular day. We don’t ask too many questions,” stated Dipti, a middle-aged woman who claimed she was from Howrah, determined to spend the night on the footpath for the next day’s deposit.

“There are two queues that are formed daily before the office based on the cap over the total number of notes exchanged. The first is of Rs 10,000, meaning five notes deposited. The other is of Rs 20,000 with 10 notes. Normally the second queue is bigger since the rush there is higher. Multiply the number of queues by two, since there are both men and women doing this job while standing in separate queues,” Parbati explained, confirming that not more than 10 notes can be deposited by an individual on a single day.

“From October 09, 2023, RBI Issue Offices, in addition to exchanging Rs 2000 denomination banknotes across the counters, are also accepting Rs 2000 banknotes from individuals / entities for deposit to their bank accounts. Further, members of the public from within the country can send Rs 2000 banknotes through India Post from any post office in the country, to any of the RBI Issue Offices for credit to their bank accounts in India,” the RBI announced. No fresh deadline has yet been set on the return of the notes.

The deposit timings of the notes are from 10 AM to 2 PM on weekdays. This correspondent found people in large numbers trying to queue up before the RBI Calcutta office, one of the 19 issue offices of the country which allows deposit and exchange of the Rs 2000 bank notes in person, at 3 PM for next day’s deposit – 19 hours ahead of start of next day’s procedure – before the police wielded sticks to disperse them. But only as far as the pavement on the opposite side of the road where they waited patiently for the police to lower their guard when they again tried to assemble before the office main gate. Only to be dispersed again.

Depositors waiting outside RBI HQ to stand in queue for the next day.

It’s a 24-hour cat and mouse game which seemed to be playing out in a loop.

“We are constantly at the mercy of the police and have to run around to avoid their ire,” said Nasima Mondal who confessed that she was relatively new to the trade and had been at the venue for only 48 hours. “There’s no guarantee that you would be able to deposit the notes even if you are in the queue,” she rued. “The bank people keep throwing us out under some pretext or the other.”

“There’s also a nagging fear that since our Aadhar details are being shared, we may get caught by the police someday,” chipped in Devika Singh, a shanty dweller from Calcutta.

The police, however, said they had no instructions to stop the process. “Our job is to ensure that there’s no law and order situation in the area. This place is a sensitive zone with the Writers’ Buildings and the RBI office bang opposite each other, besides several other sensitive government installations. We are trying our best to keep the area sanitized,” an officer from the local Hare Street police station, present at the spot, said.

“Everyone knows what’s happening here. But these are poor people. The real movers are in the backdrop. They don’t show their faces,” added another personnel in uniform standing beside the officer.

[All names mentioned in this report have been changed to protect the identities of the subjects]