[Data] Social Media reactions to #Demonetization

Almost a fortnight ago, Prime Minister, Narendra Modi shook the nation awake, giving sleepless nights to black money hoarders all across the country as he announced #Demonetization in a live televised speech.

One of the single most controversial and ground breaking decisions ever taken by an Indian Prime Minister since the rise of social media, has sent netizens into a tizzy as #Demonetization has been the most dominant trending topic.

However, there have been speculations that there are multiple sectors who have been hit the most by the currency ban. #Demonetization sent ripples across the industry with its effects being felt in the Real Estate sector, Healthcare industry, Wedding industry, and the Travel industry. All feeling the pinch of the sudden move to scrap INR 500 and INR 1000 notes from circulation.

A collective look at the social media reactions with regards to the four sectors of industry most affected by #Demonetization majority of which were negative in nature.

"While there have been millions of social media mentions on the topic, we at Meltwater thought we should analyse the conversations around who won the sentiment war. We found that over all in the Editorial media almost 55% of conversations monitored showed positive sentiment, and around 44% of the conversations on Social Media showed positive sentiment.", Nitin Bhatia, Director Agency Partnerships, Meltwater India.

"We found that the sector people were most vocal about was the Real Estate Industry with most of the conversations indicating negative sentiment. As we know that there were many hospitals who suddenly stopped accepting 1000 & 500 rupee denomination notes we observed that, Healthcare was the second most spoken about sector, followed by Weddings & Travel sector." Yangchen Yonzon, Managing Director, Meltwater India.

While majority of conversations portrayed that the Real Estate sector will have a huge negative impact due to monetisation, Abhishek Bhatewara, Director, Rohan Builder had a different take on this. "Demonitisation will lead to easing of interest rates due to lower fiscal deficit and higher lending capacity with banks. The lower fiscal will also mean government can spend more money on infrastructure. Both these effects of demonitisation will have a positive impact on home sales and prices.", he opined.

Social media users and News publications had their own share of concerns and topics that they spoke about. Ranging from the healthcare industry to E-Commerce and Education, these are the topics discussed by news publications and social media users respectively.

While all the banks are working tirelessly to ensure common people get their change and proper banking, we have seen most of bank's top management see this as the huge opportunity to help the country turn digital.

We have already seen mobile wallets using this to their advantage. In fact, as per Meltwater's analysis, the mobile wallet industry have had more than 20000 social media mentions since the currency ban announcement.