HAS DEMONETIZATION BEEN A SUCCESS?

The Supreme Court in a landmark judgement declared the demonetization of 500 and 1000 Rupee Indian notes as lawful and flawless. The judgement was decided upon by a 5 judge bench, with only the sole woman judge, Justice B.V. Nagarathna, on the bench finding the demonetization process unlawful and hence the judgement was given on a majority of 4 against 1.

Though the judgement has been declared as lawful, but the major questions that still daunts us is 'has the entire demonetization process given the results that were expected out of it'.

The fight against black money and counterfeit currency notes is a novel one as these challenges are as critical and important as social divide and unemployment. However, it seems the entire exercise of demonetization was based on the concept that ' all currency notes are black money and all black money is in currency notes'.

yes, rooting out black money has to be the primary concern of any government but the underlying fact that only a tiny proportion of the total black money is in the form of currency notes was ignored. A large proportion of black money exits in the form of real estate, gold and foreign exchange which still remains untouched. Moreover, the government's efforts to curb the hoarding of black money in the form of currency notes by introducing a 2000 Rupee Currency Note, has actually made it easier to hoard large amount of sums in significantly lesser number of notes.

It is true that the banking sector in India has improved exponentially, however almost 60 Crore Indians still reside in the regions with no banking facilities. The wreckage and havoc caused in their lives when their honest savings of many years was deemed worthless all of a sudden is still unimaginable. Though, banking services and online payment services have seen huge increase in the number of their users, but the people who were aloof from such facilities and were dependent on cash for their daily transactions whether business or personal were found helpless. The demonetization process created a doubt in the minds of common citizens which was too deep to be healed quickly, whose impact are still visible in the decadal low GDP growth rates and high unemployment rates.

Yes, to wage a war against black money and fake currency seems inspiring, however after it seems like it was the common man of India who was caught in the cross fire, while the rich found his way around.

The problems against which the entire exercise was launched, still affect all the Indians in every sphere of their lives is in itself an evidence of the lackluster performance and implementation of the whole exercise called demonetization.