There’s No Nano GPS Chip In The 2000 Rupees Note
In a surprise move made by India’s NDA government to curb black money transactions, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced yesterday that effective midnight of November 8th, ?500 and ?1000 currency notes would be demonetized and considered illegal. Further, they will be replaced by a new ?500 note and a brand new ?2,000 note that would be in circulation from November 10th, according to the RBI (Reserve Bank of India).
Soon after the announcement was made, a WhatsApp forward began doing the rounds that said that the new ?2,000 note would have a ‘Nano GPS Chip’ – aka NGC – that can be used to track the notes from anywhere via satellite, even if they were buried deep underground.
Read the message below (see image) that went viral despite many versions carrying the disclaimer, ‘it is a forward’.
RBI to issue ?2000 Rupees Notes coming February 2017
India is all set to add one more denomination to its currencies shortly. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) will be issuing Rs 2,000 currency notes, the highest to come into circulation, even as some experts feel7 high-value denominations should be discontinued to curb black money.
The Rs 2000 currency is designed keeping in mind to eradicate the black money issues using state of the art indigenous nano technology, every Rs. 2000 currency note is embedded with a NGC (Nano GPS Chip)
How the embedded NGC Technology Works? The unique feature of the NGC is it doesn’t need any power source. It only acts as a signal reflector. When a Satellite sends a signal requesting location the NGC reflects back the signal from the location, giving precise location coordinates, and the serial number of the currency back to the satellite, this way every NGC embedded currency can be easily tracked & located even if it is kept 120 meters below ground level. The NGC can’t be tampered with or removed without damaging the currency note
How will this help eradicate black money menace? Since every NGC embedded currency can be tracked. The satellite can identify the exact amount of money stored at a certain location. If a relatively high concentration of currency is found a certain location for a longer period of time at suspicious locations other than banks & other financial institutions. The information will be passed on to the Income Tax Department for further investigation
Just a beginning of the end of black money in India
However, the entire WhatsApp message is baseless. Firstly, there is nothing called nano GPS. The smallest GPS chip is apparently made by an Israeli company and even that measures around 10mm x 10mm x 3.8mm. Also, it is rubbish that a wafer-thin nano GPS chip can get a signal even “120 metres below ground level”. Note, that the only chips that can be powered by a ‘reflective signal’ – like RFID chips – can transfer data over very short distances only, and not across hundreds of thousands of kilometres like the forward suggests. Further, inserting such a RFID tag in a bank note is possible but completely impractical, and possibly exorbitantly expensive.
Please note that there is no official mention about the NGC technology being used in the new ?2000 currency note in the PM’s speech, or the RBI’s press release or the Finance Ministry’s press release.
However, Finance Secretary Ashok Lavasa has mentioned that the new “high-security” ?500 and ?2000 currency notes would be available in ATMs from November 11.
Further, the RBI released a press note containing details of all the new features of the ?2,000 note, along with its new magenta colour based design. The Father of the Nation has been moved front and centre and on the reverse is an image of Mangalyaan. But, the RBI’s chart does not mention any chip or GPS tracking in it. Here’s what RBI has actually said about the ?2000 note.
https://twitter.com/RBI/status/796031080755138563
Therefore, it is safe to say that those WhatsApp forwards are a hoax and everything mentioned above by the RBI about the ?2000 note is official. Other than that, there is no fancy technology, not even RFID probably and definitively not the nano GPS included in the ?2000 note.
Source: NDTV
