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 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].
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.
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.
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.
[1] http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation...
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.
"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.
Here's an example of hazaar with the spelling I mean: https://lh3.ggpht.com/FXu7LY_Ki5uDcYTcOWwMSxAL0lC9ttGLbNZrrT...