Operation Market garden was a complex, collaborative allied invasion in which more than 45,000 troops (mostly paratroopers & tanks) across Britain, United States, Canada, Poland & Netherlands participated in 1944. The aim was to march 95km from Netherlands to Rhine (Germany) and secure key river crossings in the path. Both Churchill and Montgomery claimed that the operation was 90% success. Yet Prince of Netherlands Bernhard claimed, “My country can never afford the luxury of another Montgomery’s success.” 16-18 thousand troops died over the 9 day offensive and another 20,000 civilians died in the famine it resulted in.
The similarities of the 50 days of mayhem during demonitisation and the planning/operations failure in Market Garden is striking. The elected officials were practically shooting from the hip. The aim, objective, policy was changing everyday with no apparent rationale. Neither the RBI, Banks, financial institutions or government had planned or coordinated. As a result, there was a lot of hardships to businesses, common men and economy in general. The only industry that boomed was the money laundering. Scores of people lined up to exchange old currency with new. Banks and financial institutions happily facilitated anyone with undisclosed income to clean his money without paying a single penny in taxes. Government launched 2 tax amnesty scheme one after another, but there were hardly any takers because the churn caused due to demonetization facilitated in layering and conversion of black into white. Today 99% of the banned currency money has been deposited, yet government seems to be still labelling this policy as a roaring success.
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