Gr Noida students staying on rent bear note ban brunt

Greater Noida is well known as an educational hub. Plenty of top universities and colleges attract students from all across the country which enables them to pursue any course they wish to. Many foreign as well as students from different states of India come here and reside in private paying guests or rented apartments. 

These students, living away from home, are typically dependent on debit cards. The government’s move to demonetise the Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes has disrupted their lives to a large extent.

Some women students in Greater Noida told Millennium Post that they even faced harassment and were assaulted in a stampede-like situation while standing in long queues outside ATMs and Banks.

Ritu Singh from Bhopal, a student pursing graduation in science at Chaudhary Charan Singh University, said: “As our exams are round the corner, it’s hard to find time to stand in the endless queues to get cash. I don’t have money to buy study material such as reference books and even for photocopying notes or other required material. Many of my friends also need to buy study material but have not been able to do so. My friends and I are contributing whatsoever we have to buy books and are somehow managing to study by sharing a single book.”

Many outstation students have been surviving on money borrowed from their friends, while others have been unable to pay their rents. Even their landlords are refusing to take payments through cheques or online transfer methods so the students are forced to arrange for cash. 

Dheeraj Sharma from Agra, a first year MBA student at Amity University said: “I share a flat for which we have to pay Rs 22,000 per month as rent. Our landlord has refused to take cheques or online payments for rent. It’s hard to arrange money in this cash-strapped condition. We somehow borrowed money from a local financier who is charging us very high interest rates.”

“We are helpless and are forced to buy our groceries from the supermarket as they accept plastic money but they are super expensive. We do not have cash to pay the local vegetable vendors. Moreover, we are living away from our homes and don’t have our mothers here to cook food for us nor do we know how to cook. So we have hired a maid for us and are unable to pay her too due to which she has also stopped coming to us,” said Sharma.