Tonight is the fifth anniversary of the Note Bank, a dramatic move in November 2016 when the prime minister came on TV to announce a ban on high value currency in a single stroke, hailed at that time as a game changer. But today five years on, the government is totally silent on its suppose it master stroke. While note ban, the wass, so to speak, is trending thanks to the critics of the decision, widely described by them as a disaster right from the start, assessing the target of the note ban. Was it, it is asked. Her was in a game changer was always a challenge, since the goalposts get shifting from reducing black money to making India cash list and so on and so forth. So far, our reality cheque. Tonight we chose five significant aims of demonetisation, starting with the goals outlined in the prime minister's famous speech, which we edited to highlight the initial goals in Mr Modi's own words. Black money, black money, black money, black money, roll of black money and black money, a plaque, money, black money and black money. This fight against corruption, corruption, corruption, corruption and corruption on through corruption, corruption against corruption to the correct pick currency. ₹500,000 notes that no state commission jobs and threat currency problem of terrorism, terrorism and terrorism, terrorists, terrorism and terrorism. So black money mentioned 17 times 17 corruption, 16 times fake currency and terrorism five times each. These were the initial goals. What's the claim and watch? The realities of the claim was that black money will be eradicated. The reality was that over 99% of the cash returned back to the banks. So if the rupee is 15 point for lakh crores, which was out there in the economy, 15.3 lakh crores came back. According to the RBI data. Huge tranches of black cash which was supposed to be thrown into the river or burnt or discard it never quite happened. The second claim from the prime minister's initial speech that the note ban was meant to curb terrorism. The reality is that there was no dramatic drop in terrorism despite the north bath. Let's look at the data for Jammu and Kashmir, India's most terror prone state, starting from 2014 if one looks at the figure 2016, it was 322 incidents started to climb, hitting 600 incidents in 2018 2019, almost against 600 finally before falling in 2020. Claim number three Eliminating fake currency notes. The reality of this that of all the band cash only rupees 58 crore Fake currency was detected since 2016 17, which is less than 170.4% of all the lakhs and crores of demonic ties currencies. All of that was wiped out, ostensibly just to detect this fractional amount. The government therefore soon started moving the gold, claiming that the idea was to move to a less cash or cashless economy. The reality is that gash in circulation today has surged 64% since the north back the cash in circulation on November 4th. 2016 just before the announcement. ₹2.18 lakh crores. October 29th 2021 is almost 30 lakh crores of the amount of cash that circulating in the economy. The final significant goalpost was at the note ban, and this is again new goal post. The note ban was meant to usher in a digital economy. Now hear the record seems more know. And so the claim is, of course not. Ban to usher a digital India The reality is this that digital payments did rise after the note ban, but and there is a But there have been pre note banned years, which actually saw similar, if not higher percentage growth of digital payments. Let's look at the chart starting from 2012 13, about four years before the note back. And as you can see, we go big screen. 2012 13 have actually 30% of then it came down 10% 5% 10% and then from 2016 17 onwards had started growing at about 20%. But then again, in 19 and 20 it fell by percentage. And of course, it then fell more significantly because of the pandemic. So that's the storey of of the claims and the reality of note Bank
