Fake money, fake pleasure and fake hopes.

"November 8, 2021 marks five years of demonetisation in India," wrote Roshan Kishore. On this day in 2016, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in a televised speech at 8 pm, announced the withdrawal of all Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes from midnight, thus giving just 4 hours notice to Indian citizens, wikipedia. These notes constituted "80% of the currency in circulation at the time in terms of value". This was done in the belief that rich people resort to cash transactions in order to avoid paying tax and this money, known as 'black money', is stored in high value notes. Chief Economist to the State Bank of India Soumya Kanti Ghosh estimated that "roughly around Rs 4.5 lakh crore (Rs 4.5 trillion) of money could disappear from the system". Since banknotes are a liability on the books of the Reserve Bank (RBI) any money that disappeared from the system would reduce RBI's liability and would be shown as profit on its books. "As a consequence, the asset would turn into profit, which could be transferred as a dividend to the government as 100 percent owner of the central bank," BS. In the event Rs 15.31 trillion, that is 99.3%, of the total value of Rs 15.41 trillion banned notes, returned to the system and only Rs 107.20 billion worth of old currency was truly extinguished, ET. Apparently, demonetisation forced Indians to switch to digital transactions, which helped during the lockdown last year, and has increased tax collections by forcing people to file tax returns, TOI. Just like demonetisation, a total lockdown was announced by Modi at 8 pm on 24 March 2020, giving 4 hours notice to citizens when there were only 500 confirmed cases of Covid with 10 deaths, india.com. That resulted in an absolute frenzy as people rushed to shops to stock up on anything they could find and this enormous congestion could have fueled the explosion of infection that followed, India Today. The lockdown was relaxed in stages, even as the number of infections were going up, wikipedia. By August the number of cases had risen to 1.5 million as "Critics argue that India was the only country that lifted its lockdown at a point when the number of cases was steadily rising instead of stabilising," wrote Prof T Jacob John and Dr Zarir F Udwadia. "The ratio of currency in circulation as a proportion of GDP touched a new high of 14.5% for fiscal 2020-21 amid the increased demand for cash and a shrinking GDP," ET. The other reason for demonetisation was that forged currency would disappear but data show that there was a 190% jump in fake currency in 2020, compared to the previous year, ET. The economy has fallen sharply. "GDP growth fell continuously for eight quarters (except for a 0.8 percentage point blip between December 2018 and March 2019), It was 8.2% in March 2018 and had fallen to just 3.1% in March 2020," Roshan Kishore. Thus demonetisation really hurt the poor while the rich were able to recycle whatever black money they had. That should be political oblivion but it actually helped Modi because the poor were made to understand that though they suffered extreme hardship the rich must have lost lots of money, and the strike against counterfeit currency improved national security, Prashant Jha. Fake money and fake hopes.