Has Demonetization Checked Corruption? Panel Discussion at Arun Kumar’s Book Launch ‘Demonetization and the Black Economy’
New Delhi: At 10 pm on November 8, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that on the stroke of midnight all 500 and 1,000 rupee notes 86 per cent of the currency in circulation would cease to become legal tender. Well If you look at demonetisation in isolation and the shock it gave to the Indian economy, it failed. But step back and see it as part of a larger plan to weed out corruption, a different story begins to emerge.
On Monday at Press Club of India,New Delhi. Renowned Economist Arun Kumar celebrated the release of his book Demonetization and the Black Economy. it was followed by a panel discussion with Yashwant Sinha, Prithviraj Chavan, Rajdeep Sardesai, Prof. Deepak Nayyar and Siddharth Vardaraian. The panel discussion was Moderated by Journalist Rajdeep Sardesai.
Arun Kumar spoke about the objective of his book and said, “Why discuss Demonetization now when the note shortage has disappeared? Clarity is still missing about why this drastic step was taken and the government continues to justify it. The reality is that while the short term economic disruption is over, the long term impact is playing itself out. Why such a step in a well-iimctioning economy? Analysts the world over will study the impact of a drastic note shortage in a major economy for a long time.”
The panel further discussed about how Demonetization was carried out on the mistaken belief that ‘black means cash’.” “This is one of the many misconceptions about the black economy in both the ruling classes and the public. However, black cash is less than 1% of the black wealth so even if this cash could be squeezed out, it would hardly impact black wealth. Further, black income generation is a process which is not impacted by demonetization”, said one of the Panelist.
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