I do accept this fact. Is there better option? I am quite sure this decision was taken after discussing with lot of people who might have done PhDs in Economics and serving for Govt.

I don't know if there is a better option but the GoI definitely didn't think this throughly. Countries that demonetized in the past did this over a span of a time to prevent panic and fear. If the Govt set a deadline instead of abolishing them overnight that would go a lot smoother. Sure, that'll give 'some' tax evaders time to plan their 'exit' smoothly but it'll make lives of millions so much easier. Most likely, the evaders use that money to buy gold, so the Govt can temporarily track all gold purchases (they do it anyways for puchases over 2 lakh rupees). Even if they end up spending the cash on inflated real estate, they're in someways helping the economy instead of hoarding the cash and will end up in someone's bank account eventually. Also, all the big tax evaders rarely hoard cash. They usually have offshore accounts and sophisticated corporate structures.

Secondly, the new notes being minted have no additional security features. The RBI confirmed that the new 500 and 2000 bank notes carry the same security features as the previous ones, which probably makes it similarly easy to counterfeit. The RBI previously claimed that it would take 5-6 years to design notes with new security features and I think they should've waited until they have better bank notes to curb fake notes.

> I am quite sure this decision was taken after discussing with lot of people who might have done PhDs in Economics and serving for Govt.

I have no hope for this country to find such views on HN of all places.

EDIT: I acknowledge this is low content comment. So I quote "the first job of an economist is to tell governments what they cannot do". Please sit back and give this a fair read [1].

[1] https://mises.org/about-mises/what-austrian-economics

Nope. This decision seems to have happened at the whim of 3 people - the PM, the finance minister, the RBI governor. Clearly they didn't even proof read the notes. The back side of the 2k rupee notes is a mess. They screwed up the spelling of 2 in Hindi and 1000 in Urdu making it Bazaar from Hazaar

"Two" appears as "दो" (do) in Hindi in the 2000 INR notes. This looks correct to me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2000_INR_Rev_2016.jpg (see the left edge of the note just below the string "2016").

If you are talking about "दोन" (don) appearing twice within the pink rectangular box, that's Konkani and Marathi, not Hindi. Two is indeed written as "दोन" (don) in Konkani and Marathi.

Then the question arises why write it like that twice. Why is not written in Hindi even once?

I thought I have explained that already in my previous comment. It is written like that twice because "Two" is "दोन" in Konkani as well as Marathi. Both languages are used in the language panel of the reverse side of the note.

"Two thousand rupees" (in English) = "दोन हजार रुपया" (in Konkani) = "दोन हजार रुपये" (in Marathi).

This is nothing new about the new 2000 INR notes. This is true for the older 5 INR, 10 INR, 20 INR, 50 INR, 100 INR, 500 INR and 1000 INR notes as well. The language panel shows only 15 of the 22 official languages of India, in alphabetical order. The 6th language in the language panel is Konkani and the 8th one is Marathi.

I have also explained in my previous comment that the denomination is also written in Hindi. Why do you think it is not written in Hindi even once? In fact, the denomination is written in Hindi on the reverse side of every note, outside the language panel, either at the bottom left corner or at the left edge. In fact, in the new 2000 INR notes, "दो हज़ार रुपये" is written in Hindi at the left edge of the reverse side of the note.

I can read Urdu and from what I can make out in images of the note, the Urdu text is fine. The font could have been better. The orthographic sign that makes the H in 'hazaar' is correct; the 'be' nuqta is a different shape. There should have been a hair-width's space after the 'dal' in 'do', but it is easily readable as 'dal' and not 'lam' as some people are claiming.

Yes. So, can I read Urdu and the hey looks like a bey. ب has the dot below it which you can clearly see in all images. ح doesn't have any dots beneath it.

Hazaar is spelt with a choti he which does have that inverted comma under it (clearly distinguishable from a nuqta by the elongated head shape, as it is on the note (but it is tiny because the font size is tiny)).

Here's an example of hazaar with the spelling I mean: https://lh3.ggpht.com/FXu7LY_Ki5uDcYTcOWwMSxAL0lC9ttGLbNZrrT...

>>I do accept this fact. Is there better option?

Which fact do you not accept? Do you believe every person in India has a bank account? Every person has credit cards? Debit cards?

Do you believe purchasing chain from production to end consumers has infrastructure for electronic transactions? Or that there is a way to make the economy run when close to 80% of the money is taken out of circulation?

>>I am quite sure this decision was taken after discussing with lot of people who might have done PhDs in Economics and serving for Govt.

That doesn't mean much when the results on the ground say the opposite.

Well, due to Prime Minister's Jan Dhan Yojana scheme, a lot more people have bank accounts and debit cards now. Over 220 million bank accounts were opened since 2014. People who have those accounts can actually make use of them now.

A lot more != All, let alone that. A lot more != Everybody-in-the-purchase-chain.

Now it was a known fact that 80% of the currency will go out of rotation. Now regardless of whether you have an account, 80% of the money people use to trade is gone!

Doesn't help if you have a account either. You don't have money to buy stuff.

Your point is if(and that is a big 'if' given 80% is gone!) you have money you could deposit it. Not spend it.

Well, I didn't actually say 'lot more == all'. I was just mentioning that PMJDY bank accounts and debit cards would ease things a bit for the people who have them, compared to the days when they had no bank accounts whatsoever (remember, PMJDY bank accounts are specially tailored for people with low income and/or unstructured income). Anyway, you don't need a bank account to exchange demonetized currency notes.

Biggest motivator for those accounts was not the privilege to have a bank account. But direct deposits in case the government wanted to pay the farmers and alike. That was the whole point in linking those to Aadhar too!

Now I'm not saying that this won't be possible. But its just these kind of changes can't be done with a throw of switch. You need to do a lot of incremental work before you can even think of this kind of big risky moves. Roll backs are hard, and in this case impossible(will lead to increase in inflation if done). Nor can you sit down quietly as there is no real way to put money back into circulation.

We all want to change the world. But we have to understand we need to change the world with consensus from people we want the changes to effect. The world is not in a hurry, and everything/everyone has their own priorities. You need to work with all that. Tech idealism is great, but at times something like this comes to remind us we know nothing about the daily complexities of other citizens.

Actually the previous time that this was shared on HN, the article clearly pointed out that less than 25% of the accounts are actually active.

Yes. Now, a lot of PMJDY bank accounts are seeing activity. This could be the case where people actually using their accounts, or could be the case where they are being misused to stash black money. In any case, GoI is looking into it[1].

[1] http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation...

Not necessarily. It is never a good premise to expect good faith from politicians.