That is just one anecdote. OTOH 103 people died in the process, productivity was lost by people standing in lines all day, GDP growth declined by over 2%, RBI's credibility has been destroyed. Sure, some rich suffered, but many more poor lost their livelihood.
Just out of curiosity, what makes you think RBI credibility is destroyed? Indian Rupee seems to be faring well compared to other currencies. Do you have any data around poor losing their livelihood? Last time I checked, street-side vendors continued selling stuff. Most poor people would rarely deal with 500/1000 so I don't know where is this coming from.
http://indianexpress.com/article/business/banking-and-financ...
> This has led to people such as former prime minister Manmohan Singh (himself a former RBI chief), former finance minister P Chidambaram, and former RBI governors Y V Reddy and Bimal Jalan raising concerns about the “harm” to the RBI’s “credibility” and talking of the “institutional damage” it has “suffered” in the process.
http://www.mydigitalfc.com/my-world/rbi-row-oppn-slams-govt-...
> “I don’t think ever before, the employees of a government institution especially an independent and respectable institution like RBI have written against its national policy. Very clearly RBI has compromised to an extent never ever before. Prime Minister Modi and his government have destroyed RBI, its credibility and the role of an institution,” Congress leader Sandeep Dikshit told ANI.
I wouldn't take the statements about credibility at their face value. AFAIK it didn't seem like RBI's credibility got affected. Also, as other poster cited, most of those seem to be the opposition and they are just "concerns" rather than "facts".
With respect to poor losing jobs, that seems like a play around statistics more so than actual facts. 1.5 million out of 406.5 million lost jobs, which equals to 0.36%. Employment usually goes in cycles so we don't know how this relates to the previous year. Given that April is the end of financial year, could it be the case that people usually get fired during that time? I don't know.
I have no meat in this game. I would consider myself as an observer interested in knowing how it worked out. This whole debate is very polarised and it is hard to separate fact from fiction. I would take everything with a grain of salt. As an Indian growing up in the hopes of seeing a developed country, I was hopeful that this could actually be the catalyst that roots out corruption. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be the case. Well, we keep dreaming on...
You may debate about job losses, but all of the aggregate effects have been captured by the GDP growth rate which has dipped to 5.7% compared to 7.9% the same quarter last year.
This is mostly due to GST impl. in July. Manufacturing had stopped and warehouses were no longer being filled from March onwards in anticipation of GST.
3 out of the 4 persons mentioned here (Singh, Chidambaram and Dikshit) are opposition party leaders, so I wouldn't take their statements at face value.
Did you even read the articles? There are 5 people mentioned, two of whom are former RBI governors and apolitical. While Manmohan Singh and Chidambaram are from the opposition, they are noted economists - MMS had predicted back in Nov. 2016 that GDP growth would drop by two percentage points and he was bang on target. The third article was about a letter written by RBI employees about the RBI loosing credibility and the Congress spokesperson was simply echoing their words. I can't provide more sources right now (on phone) - during the demonetization period - ATMs were not working, shortage of new notes, RBI issuing new directives each day because it could not cope, a general confusion all around - all severely damaged the RBI.
I did read the article, thanks for asking. Doesn't change the fact that those 3 persons I mentioned are opposition leaders. And hence I don't take their (Singh, Chidambaram and Dikshit) words at face value. I'm not even questioning Singh's credentials as an economist.
Edit: I didn't realize that you mentioned 5 people in your comment. I stand corrected on that account.
