The Reserve Bank of India’s report detailing the costs of the demonetisation, and the government’s subsequent attempts to explain that it was not a failure, has led to reams of commentary from analysts and experts attempting to evaluate Narendra Modi’s flagship policy move. Writers from across the spectrum have tried to analyse the massive move, which saw 86% of India’s currency withdrawn last year in an attempt to fight black money. The government’s reluctance to be transparent about the costs and benefits of the effort has inspired much of this commentary, most of it focused on simply parsing the data or breaking down the government’s claims.

The major takeaway from the RBI report, that nearly all of the demonetised notes returned to the system, has prompted analysts from both sides of the divide to conclude that demonetisation was a failure. A few others tried to explain why the RBI’s data was not certain enough to say if the move had been unsuccessful, although even those analyses said that any answer would be premature right now.

Below, a selection of analyses and comment pieces from across the spectrum.

  1. Mint’s editorial saying that the newspaper “overestimated the amount of illegal wealth that would be extinguished while paying little attention to the immediate negative impact it would have on economic activity.” The leader begins by saying there is “now ample proof that the grand demonetisation gamble has failed to meet its primary objective.”
  2. Arvind Virmani in the Economic Times estimates that demonetisation reduced Gross Domestic Product growth by about 1.2% in the first half of 2017. He adds that the economy is likely to bottom out in July, and that the negative effects of demonetisation are largely over.
  3. “If more money coming back to the RBI is a measure of success, then the government should welcome people (having old notes) depositing their money in the banks,” writes Arun Kumar in the Wire. “ Instead, the government is fighting tooth and nail against allowing one last chance to the old and the infirm to deposit the money they may have forgotten about.”
  4. V Anantha Nageswaran in Mint says that the return of most demonetised notes is not proof that demonetisation failed. But the failure to anticipate the economic fallout, subsequent measures that have made things worse and the lack of palliatives are all evidence that the move will go down in history as a “failed policy experiment.”
  5. Jagdish Bhagwati, Vivek Dehejia and Pravin Krishna in the Print insist that the RBI numbers are not enough to prove that demonetisation has failed, while adding that it will “take many more years for its full impacts and possible upside gains, quite apart from its short-term costs, which are evident, to be realised and quantified.”
  6. Far from speeding up the expansion of the tax base, James Wilson argues in the Wire that data currently available suggests that year-to-year growth as of now is actually slower in the year including demonetisation than the year before.
  7. R Jagannathan in Swarajya wonders if the only way for the government to proceed, after the failure of demonetisation, is to initiate a raid raj, which in turn could easily lead to more corruption among tax officials.
  8. “Now that the failure of the policy is generally accepted,” writes Mihir Sharma in Mint, “it’s hard to see how [Narendra Modi’s] government can be trusted to introduce effective policy changes.”
  9. Montek Singh Ahluwalia in Mint says too much of the discussion on the slowdown in the last two quarters has focused on whether demonetisation’s effects are through. Instead, India needs to look at a more worrying underlying downward trend that is dangerous for the economy.
  10. Manas Chakravarty in Mint looks at four scenarios for where the Indian economy might go after months of sluggish growth: Good, bad, worse, and worst.

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