Ten years ago, Indians were asked to surrender the use of their own money with only four hours’ notice. It was a shock and awe operation. At 8 pm on November 8, 2016, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced on television that existing Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes would cease to be legal tender at midnight. They represented about 86% of currency in circulation. Holders could deposit them in banks, but the replacement new cash notes were scarce. The system was not ready. Many ATMs were yet to be recalibrated. The right to spend their own savings had been suspended.
The hardship was immediate. Long queues, strict withdrawal limits and scarcity of notes. Workers lost wages while waiting outside banks. Small businesses could not pay suppliers and employees. Farmers needed cash for inputs and labour. A Rs 2,000 note, when available, was often difficult to use because nobody had change. Bank employees worked late hours past midnight and for several weeks to administer a decision for which the system was inadequately prepared.
Yet many people enduring the suffering supported the exercise. They believed that somewhere, wealthy tax evaders were suffering far greater losses. Their inconvenience seemed a reasonable contribution to a national campaign against black money. Public trust in the PM’s decision was very high. Ten years later we still don’t have an honest accounting of what their sacrifice accomplished.
The original announcement identified black money, corruption, counterfeit currency and terrorism as its targets. But subsequently the objectives kept shifting to greater tax compliance, formalisation and digital payments. Each offered a different standard of success. The expanding and changing list made it easier to claim achievement without settling whether the original promises had been fulfilled.
The most dramatic expectation was that large hoards of illicit cash would become worthless because their owners would dare not deposit them. In August 2018, the RBI’s final accounting showed that 99.3% of the withdrawn currency had returned into the banking system. On July 1, 2017, in his address to the chartered accountants on their institute’s foundation day, the Prime Minister pointedly asked whether their intense work after demonetisation had served the nation or their clients. He admonished CAs for providing professional help to suspicious companies to recycle illegal cash. This raises a question. If holders of unaccounted cash could find intermediaries to get around the restrictions, what justified imposing such hardship on the entire country?
Some of the returned cash did trigger tax investigation. But the anticipated destruction of large hoards of illicit cash had plainly failed to materialise. How much additional tax and black money was ultimately recovered? Did the gains justify the nationwide disruption?
Confiscating cash alone was not going to work anyway. The Finance Ministry’s own 2012 White Paper showed that cash seized in searches amounted to only about 4% to 7% of undisclosed income admitted in those cases. The government’s own enforcement experience, therefore, warned against equating illicit wealth with cash. Such wealth could be held in benami property, gold, business assets and overseas holdings. Cancelling notes would leave those assets untouched.
If the objective was just discontinuing high denominations, there was a different way. In May 2016, the European Central Bank announced that it would discontinue issuing €500 notes. Existing notes would remain valid and could be exchanged indefinitely. Kenneth Rogoff’s book in the same year, The Curse of Cash, advocated very gradual withdrawal of large notes, with safeguards for poorer households. India instead withdrew two denominations overnight and introduced an even higher one. That defies logic. In 2023, RBI withdrew Rs 2,000 notes from circulation, quietly and non-disruptively, while retaining their legal-tender status.
Digital payments have since grown enormously and the monthly run rate is above 25 billion UPI transactions valued at more than Rs 31 trillion. Cheap data, smartphones, convenient applications, QR codes and free UPI to users have helped build that success, not just demonetisation. Cash in circulation, now at Rs 43 trillion, has more than doubled since demonetisation. Thus, cash and digital payments are both needed in India’s developing economy.
What about the damage to livelihoods? The Economic Survey acknowledged that official GDP could understate losses because informal activity was difficult to measure. Agriculture and small businesses were badly hit. But neither official national statistics nor later recovery can fully capture a closed workshop, an interrupted education, distress borrowing or savings exhausted during unemployment. A temporary interruption can leave a household permanently poorer.
The courts offered little relief. In January 2023, the Supreme Court upheld demonetisation by a four-to-one majority. It subsequently disposed of individual petitions seeking exchange of old notes, acknowledging potentially genuine grievances but directing petitioners back to the government. These orders provided no monetary relief.
What remains missing is a comprehensive retrospective balance sheet connecting measurable benefits with economic and social costs. Investigations announced, suspicious accounts identified and companies struck off are just intermediate actions. An independent review should also ask whether less disruptive enforcement could have secured the same gains. Citizens were entitled to that comparison before being asked to bear such an extraordinary burden.
The political calculation also deserves attention. Demonetisation preceded the Uttar Pradesh election, and contemporary reporting described how cash-dependent regional parties faced difficulties. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley later acknowledged that the government had been certain the move would help politically. That does not prove that disabling political rivals was its sole purpose. The subsequent electoral victory could hardly settle the economic merits.
Preparation, independent scrutiny and clear objectives protect citizens from avoidable harm. When policy fails, changing the justification, retreating without explanation or waiting for public attention to move elsewhere cannot discharge the obligation to account.
Looking back, is this an episode India should be proud of? There is little reason for pride. Ten years later, a white paper and a public reckoning remain overdue.
The Billion Press
(Dr Ajit Ranade is a noted
economist.)
