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Last week, former Indian finance minister P.Chidambaram said "not a single economist worldwide has approved the demonetization in India 2016

On November 08, 2016, Indian Prime minister made a sudden announcement that Rs 500 and Rs 1000 currency notes will be invalid from November 09, 2016. The Indian government plan was to destroy all black money/unpaid taxes hidden by Indians in cash in the form of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes.

Indian people were given time till November 23, 2016 to exchange the old currency notes at all the banks in India. So there were long queues outside Banks for depositing money and also withdrawing money. I was in the queue at the bank for 2 hours and 30 minutes.

Later Indian Congress leader 'Rahul Gandhi" said "91 people had died in queues outside banks and ATMs" which was the result of sudden announcement by PM Narendra Modi.

Prime Minister "Narendra Modi" is very proud of his actions  

Regardless of it being entirely true or not, the easiest way to avoid being subject to this sort of herd-mass-attack, you have to make sure that you hedge the crap out of your weaker fiat currency during "stable" times. If something like this happens, you can just continue with your day as if nothing interesting happened, because it doesn't affect you personally.

People wrongly assume that current situation is different from what previously happened, but they just fool themselves. Every basic aspect related to fiat is inherently doomed to fail, especially when you have rogue governments accelerating that process.

Instant implementation of rules about currency is much absurd for holders, can you clear about the discussion did this implementation happened few years ago since you stated november 2016? Is india a federal country?  Do you have any links of articles? In order for me to broaden my knowledge about it?

Some reports say 108 people died in queues outside ATMs and banks. Never heard of demonetisation anywhere in the world so I wrote about it here in international forum.

USA has the biggest problem of counterfeit currency. But USA does it the police way.

It sounds terrible and I am impressed that the prime minister was satisfied the own decision. I am sure that this event must be investigated  and it need to punish the officials who could not organize a normal process of an exchange. We live in the 21 century but such events could not happen in the civilized world so I am disappointed that people do not want to evolve and be more civilized. I know that much depends on the government but anyway people must respect themselves.

oh, what a pity but you have to edit title, there were dead 33 people, not 91. It's shame, such things were happening in late 90's in some post soviet states, it's 21th century now, in this world economic war is more dangerous than civil war. Why the hell they did it? Seems government doesn't care about people and they don't had to make make that action because number of population is very high in that country. Government had to understand it but they hang on.

Sad to hear this, government should not act like this because in the first place its your money and you have the right to get what you deserve in an easy way. This is the power of the government, now I see the reason why cryptomarket dump during the announcement of banning bitcoin in India. India is a great market, I hope they are more open about new technologies like this.

Saudi Arabia has had painful experiences with stampedes during Haj time.  Many lives were lost.  The UK has also had deadly stampedes of drunken fans at their football games.  However, the Indian government knows that it is responsible for the second most populous country in the world, so you would think that someone would have taken this into consideration before opening the banks to the public.   Especially in a country where rural poverty and being ‘underbanked’ is so widespread.   

Which is why anyone expecting crypto to be anything other than fully China'd in India is dreaming. Their government is willing to plunge millions into instant disaster by screwing with their cash. They've had heavy restrictions on gold ownership.

No doubt those in the know will find ways around it but it will never be allowed to officially fly there. It's dead before it even got going.

Eh, OK.  I'd like to see a reference or something here for the claim.  How did they die?  Isn't this old news?

The first thing I thought of is all the violence I've read about on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving in the US.  People line up outside big box retailers, and there have been people trampled in the ensuing rushes.  People die everywhere for all sorts of reasons, and 91 or even 300+ is not a large number--tragic, yes, but it's not like a massacre (and I'd still like to hear how they died).

I've always been a fan of keeping some cash at home, locked up in a safe.  I think that's always a good idea, whether you're anticipating a financial collapse or not.  You never know when you're going to lose your debit & credit cards or when local businesses suddenly lose the ability to take electronic payments.  That happened in my neighborhood back in 2011 when we got hit by an early blizzard and the whole town was in the dark for about 4 days.  It was a nightmare, but I was able to buy some food at the local Walgreens because I had cash.

If you live in an economically unstable country, I think keeping fiat on hand is a must.  If you can afford it, that is.  It's not always easy to put money aside.

That is so sad, unnecessary and avoidable chaos, this is one of the reasons why crypto-currencies is much desirable to those who understands how it works.The government cannot wake up one day and declare your money invalid or unusable, too much control and abuse of power.With cryptos, the power is determined by the people

This was very bad of the government. Announcing that a particular currency note will be invalid within 24hrs is absurd. Such a decision should have been protested by the people considering the death casualties too.

oh sad, the bank's shortage is huge and because it can kill 91 people, I hope this can be fixed, is the Indian bank not ashamed to be seen from its neighboring country

There must 0.01% black money and 99.9% white money in India. India's top 5 companies [RIL, TATA group etc..] profits must be more than black money in India.

Found this news here.
https://www.google.com.ph/amp/s/amp.dw.com/en/was-indian-pm-modis-demonetization-move-a-failure/a-40415890

Yes this was an old news and people died because of exhaustion since they've been waiting for long hours on queues outside and the deaths actually over 100.

This demonization of currency had failed even PM Modi has clear intention to eliminate black market money however they didn't anticipated the deaths of people that just wanted to assure that their hard work won't turn to nothing. Report says that those who died are fruit vendors that didn't manage to have bank account that's why they just insisted to wait on queue.  :'(

2016 is not a long period from now and there is need for discussion like this to be done in other to put in perspective the consequences of decisions made by the people we elect to represent us and make decisions on our behalf.

Whether the death toll is 33, 91, 108 or 5. Such decisions are not meant to take any life and even if one life is lost, its too expensive which shows the deficiency in such decision which include among other reasons the timing that is given to carry out the exercise and at the end of the day its the poor people that would be affected as they are the ones who are not connected with bankers or know people in high places in other to facilitate the exchange process seamlessly.

I have read about a country that changed its currency over night because they were having civil war and needed to render the other side useless with the currency they have amassed to pursue the war. Others have been about corruption after huge stash of money have been kept by corrupt individuals at the expense of the populace but in situations like this, there is always a proper and process put in place to avoid such calamity as a result of their good intentions.

That is the part of politics which we experience all the time. There have been mistakes from the government in the past and they will keep reputing because they sometimes go against the will of democratise decisions. Many times they think whatever plans they have plotted will come to the end with proper results but that doesnt happen as government decisions and people's mind dont match always. Where people think that things should have gone by A-B-C way at that point government will be thinking by C-B-A route and thus results differ all the time. May be this is more or less politics and nothing else.

Never heard of currency ban/demonetization to eliminate 0.01% black money and terrorists in the country. Did India invent something bad and new ??   ???

You know, I didn't do any google search or anything before I made my last post, but I had some suspicion that this news report wasn't what it was probably intended to be, or at least what OP meant it to be.  Dying from exhaustion is far different than people slaughtering each other or being killed by the government/police or whatever.  It's still tragic, but the deaths don't really have much to do with the economy--other than the bank run, but those have happened sporadically for many, many years.

Thanks for the link and always be careful about reading stuff here and elsewhere.  Something tells me even this number of "exhaustion" deaths is exaggerated, but I have no proof of that.  Then again, there's not even really proof of the deaths anyway (that can I can verify), just a news report.

I'll tell you why most people don't  own and probably never will own a safe. And i'm not talking about those masterlock safes that you can open with a magnet, or those things you find in cheap hotel rooms. A decent safe is heavy, expensive, takes space on the floor, or has to be built into the wall. If you live in an apartment it will always catch an eye of visitors. And after all this trouble all you'll have is some fiat that doesn't even make a decent toilet paper substitute if that runs out. In case of a real economic collapse you'll need toilet paper more than fiat money.

It's interesting because something like this can also be used to avoid huge inflation rates like it happens in Venezuela, with the biggest inflationary level of the entire world by a really big margin. You can't just have currency stored in the bank without knowing it is worth less everyday that passes by.

It can be done easily buying $ or Bitcoin for example. It's interesting that this kind of things very rarely if ever happens in developed countries so the regular citizen wouldn't know what to do probably. But in places where they are used to poverty, people should have a backup plan for when mass hysteria comes.

Banning two notes in existing circulation does nothing to stop money laundering. Sure, you could give some trouble to them, but the launderers are going to continue to work, even without all of the cash in circulation.

I think that it's quite a ill-advised decision that they did this still. It posed no real benefits, while inconveniencing pretty much everyone in India that held these notes.

There were even fatal instances of withdrawing money, it seems. Again, it was a rash decision that wasn't thought out carefully. If you're going to do this, at least do it in a way that does not result in such high demands on the banks.

Futher economic implications of india's "demonetisation" policy from 2016:


Appears to have inflicted far more economic damage than economic benefits provided.

Was this related to the "cashless society" movement? Either to create a precedent where paper money might be blamed for the negative implications of india's 2016 demonetization policy. Or to discourage the use of cash, in some strange attempt to push electronic money as being a superior alternative?

If I recall correctly, talking to Indians and with a Southeast Asian perspective based on our own knowledge of things here in the South and Southeast, it was very much to do with the "black money" referenced in OP. India would never push e-money when large swathes of its population aren't accessible digitally.

See, in countries like ours, where corruption can almost be equated in cold hard cash, these were the notes most commonly used to launder and keep black money circulating. People weren't keeping dirty cash in banks, but in stacks and piles under their beds, buried, etc. In one fell swoop, they sought to remove all this power from organised crime. It worked somewhat, despite the economic repercussions. I think the layperson suffered the most, however.

Till 31 January 2017, ATM machines in India's biggest city "Mumbai" had less cash or no cash. I mean ATM machines were closed for 2 months since new currency notes did not arrive.

Yes that is what they are speaking about. Actually Indian vice president thought that he will be able to take out all the black money form the corrupted system. I am pretty sure that they were successful in doing that as most of the people who held the cash money in their lockers got robbed with their black money.

But recently when the RBI load was calculated then it came to notice that their is insufficiency of the money within the nation. RBI never calculated or failed to calculate the cascade of events which occurred later on and thus became short on printing the money.

The cashless dream literally became more costlier than what they thought.

As you have said “some reports says” meaning this based only on Hearsay and you don’t have any links to support your story?What the heck budz ..stating an old issue without any proof is a shit and considered as nonsense .make it real do some job before creating a thread

Today $1 = 72 Indian Rupees

In 2016, $1 = 63 Indian Rupees

I am not much into politics and also i do not have enough knowledge about the politics but i guess "Rahul Gandhi" is not a much important person to the government now. He is the most trolled representative and also had no seats in the election this time. We actually don't know the truth that really 91 peoples died outside the banks and ATMs?

That actually sounds much funny and it is not that big issue. No one had any kind of injuries during the demonization. Demonization was for the better of the country "India" as it was an act to destroy the black money and j guess the PM of India "Narendra Modi" achieved some success in it as the total circulation of the national Centralised currency "INR" was changed a bit which indicates that it was a successful act for eradication of the black money.

I had read a lot about it into the global news as it was much popular and also i think some new taxed like "GST", "SGST", "IGST" etc were too been applied on the Indian taxe returns which made the existence of Black Money much harder. Hope that this act proves much better and it should contribute the the development of the country.

Sorry for late answer, that happened in 2016 and here is the link for reference: http://www.india.com/news/india/demonetisation-33-dead-due-to-ban-on-rs-500-and-rs-1000-1649501/
Of course we have to keep some cash at home, Personally I will never demand fully on 3rd party. These days I needed to withdraw money from ATM, however black line on card got scratched and ATM couldn't read card, didn't want to pay extra fees for paywave withdraw. Needed money and had some cash, this escaped me from embarrassing situation. This example is nothing compared to your but still in 2018, it's not a good idea to avoid having some extra cash for bad days or moments.

Yes that was the worst decision which could have been taken by a government.They should have predicted the disasters they would have to face after applying it.They should have printed new currencies readily to immediately supply it after demonization.I would like to share a sad incident.In Telangana state of India,a women had sold her land for her husband's medical treatment for 80,000 Dollars.The very next day when she got her money,demonitization was announced by the government and all her money became useless papers and she was not able to give her husband treatment and so she commited suicide.

Shame on the Indian government.It has almost murdered her and many other innocent people.

Indians were given time till 23 November 2016 to exchange their old currency notes at the banks. No government can make currency notes useless in one day.

Sounds like a true puppet. They're arrogant if allowed.

People didn't protest the death afterall?  This sort of thing could repeat if non is held accountable. Thought the country is a democracy.

I read that the country is implementing an extreme ID scheme called Aadhaar . Expect them to lock you out of the country's financial system in the name of law, financial crisis or security. Government controlled ID system is very dangerous. It's safe to decentralize.

If that was their plan, then it certainly didn't work. Black money will simply move to electronic means of storage now. Just because a few notes are wiped out, it doesn't mean that black money suddenly disappears.

What the ban did was pose a huge inconvenience to every day citizens, especially Indians living overseas with these notes. Because if they wanted to cash them out, they either had to find a currency exchanger overseas in their country, or go back to India.

Can't believe that there is actually this many fatalities just from queuing for cash either. Although, it is logical given that this affected everyone in India given the sheer population. I personally hold the opinion that the demonetization was probably unnecessary and not well executed, even if it was necessary.

India’s rupee owes its tag of Asia’s worst-performing currency this year to the selloff sweeping emerging markets. There’s more pain in store from beyond its borders.

Read more at: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com (http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/65684423.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst)

Its demonetization, it wasn't well planned, but was necessary at that time. The amount of corruption going around in India goes way beyond than what we speak. The current Prime Minister is trying hard to bring his country to the top, the number of visits he has made to other countries for discussing things and getting things done is astounding. You can poke him how much ever you want, but he's doing something. People were given so many days to convert their money. It wasn't a great move, but it ruined the lives of those who live by corruption, and doing illicit things.

This is a very horrible thing to have happened. The law should have taken an action about this kind of incidence. The people cannot just be pushed about like that by the government that is supposed to provide comfort for them.

are cryptocurrencies worth standing in line for so long? I think it's just another craze.

I don't really think it has anything to do with corruption. They tried to go cashless and it backfired. They're walking these steps back now.

Their general anti-crypto sentiment may even be over-correction from this failed attempt. This is nothing but conjecture on my part though.

U.S President Donald Trump said "Barack Obama did scary things"

This is totally bad and  government should look into this in order to necessary precaution.

are cryptocurrencies worth standing in line for so long? I think it's just another craze.

It's not a coincidence that India has moved against cryptocurrencies earlier this year - they know well that decentralized and especially private coins are just like cash, and people will turn to them when the real cash is banned. Bitcoin is the first line of defense against cashless society that is being pushed by banks and governments,  so we need to always stay vigilant to keep it decentralized and secure, if it will lose those values, the government might do with it something similar what they are doing in India with cash.

Absolutely agree with each of these words. You should never trust whatever your government says or wants you to believe. They may promise one thing today and tomorrow do the apposite of what they promised yesterday. People should understand that they will always pay for the mistakes that their ruling elites make and will continue doing. Confiscatory monetary reforms are in fact nothing new as this is what is now taking place in India. Such reforms happen regularly here and there, and still more so in developing countries suffering from high inflation rates. So if you happen to live in a country like India or Venezuela, you should stay away from the local currency as far as possible. Buy dollars, gold, bitcoins, whatever which is not linked nor depends on your government in any way.

Very important policies like this need to be planned very carefully, especially about demonetization in a country with very large population like India must go through a long transition until it’s completed. The role of the media between publication and the connection between the government and citizens has become cruci (http://hafana.com)al.

If this is really gonna happen one day in the way you describe, the only asset which will still have value before things develop into a Mad Max style disaster is gold (and silver, to a degree). So if you are seriously considering buying a solid safe, you also should consider buying some solid assets along with it, as these will be the last to lose value if things start to develop along the worst-case scenario. If events continue to unfold beyond that, your only hope would be your family, friends, sharp shooting and sophisticated survival skills.

Narendra Modi's government called as corporate governments by the Indian people because he is always takes action favours for the corporates not for the citizens and the crime rate increased since the BJB governments starts ruling and India becomes number one in the corruption so he did lot of achievements in this ruling period so my middle finger salutes him always.

I would say it is a complete hypocrite mentality to link the deaths with the demonetization. We want to be able to see the impact of Demonetisation or GST in short-term because whenever you are implementing something in a territory having the population of more than 1 billion, you have to give at least 5 to 10 years for the same to see the impact on the economy.

* World Bank says India has recovered from impact of demonetisation, GST (https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/world-bank-india-has-recovered-from-impact-of-demonitisation-gst/story-9KGsZ6Nysb7cItmqdsXUAN.html).


I believe that it's the time to appreciate these groundbreaking decisions and move on. I am not supporting or discouraging anyone but sometimes being uncomfortable is the only option for the bright future.

By the way, it is very surprising to see people die in bank queue but not even a single person died while standing in a queue for free coffee or sim card.




Anyways, I am optimistic about the future and I don't see any trouble for the Indian economy to grow in near future.

* Demonetisation, GST will bring long-term benefits: IMF (https://indianexpress.com/article/india/demonetisation-gst-imf-indian-policies-bjp-4994683/).

The demonetization were implemented by Indian government to wash a way all the black money in their country but they failed to achieve that since there were lot of BJB politicians were spending the new printed money in huge amount when the people were looking for some notes so they just did this to convert all the black money into their own.

And GST has going insane in that country because most of the well developed countries have only GST upto one digit number in tax but India has upto 28% os GST to our daily usage and no taxes for the expensive things so this is intention to develop the country or just back up the big companies.

Yes, the government took some bold steps but that doesn't mean every step should give quick results. Especially when it comes to the country having a population of more than 1.3 billion, you can't expect overnight results. As far as favour matter is concerned, any government in this world is not able to give jobs to billions of people and that's why you have to favour those who can do that job. Rome wasn't built in a day.

As I said, turbulence doesn't mean things are going to end. Bold decisions (such as 1991) have given us good results so far and hence I believe that we should give more time to analyse the results.

On the other hand, as a common man, we can't do much when it comes to the politics. We have to choose the better option from those who are consisting the elections and expecting the best one is a foolish expectation.

Today Indian Congress has carried out "India shutdown" against highest food prices and fuel prices

Read More: https://twitter.com/hashtag (https://twitter.com/hashtag/BharatBandh?src=tren)

I never understood that logic. I mean how the number of people should necessarily add up to the time it takes for some economic policies to have effect. Care to explain? For me, if these policies are affecting all people at once, as they should, not one by one, it doesn't really matter how many people live in a country. On the contrary, the effects may in fact depend on the population density, and in India it is huge, and likely of the highest in the world. So, if anything, the effects should reveal themselves rather sooner than later.

Rome was not built in a day but if it had been built by over 1 billion people, it would have been built in half an hour. With adequate management, naturally. Without proper management, it would have been destroyed even faster.

The more troubling side of this is the fact that citizens did not trust the Banks enough to deposit this money into the Banks. Most of the people in those queues are average citizens with savings stashed under the mattress and not some criminal with dirty money.  ::)

We have also seen similar queues like this, when Greece placed limits on money that can be withdrawn from ATMs during the Bank rush.   

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-07-01/why-are-greeks-lining-up-outside-atms-banks-crisis/6586770

Who can ever forget this photo : http://jakartaglobe.id/economy/miles-athens-greeks-overseas-buy-groceries-family-back-home-2/

Yeah I just read this news, But I check the oil prices of India. Petrol is cheaper in India and they supply many countries. I think approximately 34 Indian rupees per litre, But prime minister is totally against in consumer because they earn many black money in petroleum companies. So government should not fix the prices in oils and It is democratic country so peoples are directly complaint the government.

This also goes to show that even though it is our money, it is still controlled
by others, they call the shots and we have to react to the situation and conform.

Another perfect example of why Bitcoin was invented and what it can offer in
such events.

Terrible situation for people to be put in.

#BharatBandh got 200,000 tweets on twitter in 8 hours. Could be highest on twitter   ;D

Well, this is one of the reasons why the digital age will just keep bringing a lot of ease when it comes to transactions and at least people would not have to keep being in a long queue all in the name of withdrawal or something. For what it is worth anyway, as time goes on I believe people will start seeing more need in which this space would bring about more ease to them and this is the major value that the space creates and for the fact that everyone is simply in control of their spending, and due to its decentralized nature, no goddamn bank or government will be able to have a strong hold on it.

Indian billinoaires "Nirav Modi and Vijay Mallaya" scamming banks of $3.5 billion.

Currency ban or demonetisation in India 2016, first in history

bitconnect.com $13 billion ponzi scheme whose owner got arrested in India.

Now Petrol is Rs 90 per litre in Mumbai, India. In Delhi petrol is Rs 84 per litre.

Whatever policies the government makes shouldn’t take the rights away of its citizens, looks like the policy wasn’t made well and seemed rushed, even though the demonetization wasn’t an ea (http://hafana.com)sy thing and need a long time to be fully implemented.

I the problem is the government's execution of this rupee note demonetization. I think the better way is to see this tax situation a year ahead so thatt the announcement could be done a year ahead and have people take their time to exchange their notes for longer period of time. Giving a day and you will see chaos.

The sudden decision will always destroy the economic growth and middle-class people will suffer a lot because they need to stay a very long queue. I don't know why the government will take a sudden decision on this activity but one thing I want to control whether they managed to collect the money from the people?

really the decision of a leader who is not wise, it may be true that his ideas and thoughts are good, but a good process is needed in its implementation, really inhumane if a regulation is made to sacrifice the lives of its citizens, regulations should be made to provide comfort and a better life for the people, I do not blame the decision taken by the prime minister but I regret why it seems sudden, if it is a big decision there should be gradual and controlled actions, so that there will be no loss of life, I am curious if there are illegal statements and legal sanctions For the ownership of the crypto currency in India, what will happen? Do you need a victim?

Sure, there should always be a process for everything and even if you want to make a decision, make sure that the first set of people you should be thinking of are the most at risk population which in this case are the low class and the middle class as far as I am concerned.

Unfortunately this has happened, and one way or the other, we just have to realize the need why we need a total liberation from all these way government has always executed their plans and at the end of the day, even if they have good intentions, which I doubt, they simply lack the prowess to execute it appropriately.

That is always the crazy part, the middle class as well as the low class are usually the ones suffering all the bad economic policies from the government both in the short term and in the long run and one of the reasons we just have to take freedom into our own hands if we wish to be liberated with the crypto ecosystem.

We have always known government to always come up with some drastic and not well thought decisions, and that basically shows that we have a governmental system that care less about the people they are meant to serve but only care about themselves.

This is a failure in the government's side and it's people shouldn't suffer for this. I mean a year at least is needed to demonetize a currency to make way for new ones. The ones that die due to this irresponsible act should be compensated for their loss. This is a blatant disregard for the welfare of it's citizens.

Here in my country news like that is not new and is always happening most especially in this season. Fiat money  is the cause why people died every single day and that is what fiat did to the world. If people would use Bitcoin or any cryptocurrency as funds I think the risks would lessen  due to the privacy feature of crypto. Though crypto is volatile I think we need to have both assets to make sure we are safe.

This is really a repression from the government of India. I am not a native of India but I am really upset about this action. The country of India will not be able to develop better if such a situation persists.