Ever since Telangana Rashtra Samithi president and chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao mooted the proposal of introducing “helicopter money” before Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the video conference and later in a separate letter, it created a lot of confusion among the people.
Nobody understood what exactly KCR was referring to, nor was there any proper explanation from him or the state government.
Even the Centre did not give any clarification on what the helicopter money is all about as it dumped his proposal in the dust bin.
However, KCR’s proposal of helicopter money triggered several stories and speculations in the social media. Even some television channels conducted debate on it without studying the proposal.
So, some sections of people started believing that if the lockdown situation continues further and the people are deprived of resources, the Centre will bring money in helicopters and drop them on roads, so that they could collect them for using.
With such rumours gained momentum in the social media, the Centre has to finally clarify on Thursday.
Without elaborating what the helicopter money is all about, the Press Information Bureau announced that the Centre will not do any such thing as dropping money from helicopters.
The PIB Fact Check has rubbished news reports claiming the government will drop money from helicopters amid the lockdown and said, "The government will do no such thing".
So, what is helicopter money after all?
It is one of the many policies of various countries, in which a central bank – in case of India, it is Reserve Bank of India – prints large sums of additional currency and distributes it among the people in order to stimulate the economy and overcome liquidity crunch. It can also be done in the form of a tax cut.
However, no government considers it because printing additional currency leads to large scale inflation and finally to the collapse of the economy if not properly handled.
