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Comment by ramshanker | Hacker News Reader

I believe otherwise for following aftereffects. 1. Literally Every nook & corner shop now accepts digital payments. 2. I have seen cash-distribution by candidates during elections to influence votes! They were mostly absent in the immediate subsequent state elections. 3. Many "Poor" people made extra money by queuing in the line for "Rick" people. The commission went as high as 20% at some places. 4. Terrorist activity immediately stopped all over the place because they are mostly cash sponsored. 5. Situation normalized within 3 month. 6. Many of counterfeit presses in neighboring countries stopped working for some time at least.

I also stood in line 4 or 5 times, but than every "Line" in India is average 10m long for any kind of services. We are used to it !!!!

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Every single point that you have said has been debunked many times over. DeMo was a stupid thing to even try accomplishing what you are trying to say it accomplished.

For the want of killing crocodiles, we drained the whole pond and only ended up killing the fish instead. Crocodiles were back after a month.

A simple Google search shows you are wrong.

> Overall, however, our study strongly suggests that India’s 2016 demonetization, the largest the world has ever seen, effectively stimulated the transition from a cash-based to digitally enabled economy.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/nusbusinessschool/2018/09/01/in...

You are only addressing 1/6 points mentioned by the OP, most of which is a load of BS. As for the gain in digital transactions, was there no other way to boost them? If the supreme leader comes up with another rule that anyone who uses cash will be shot, the cash-based transactions will reduce to nearly 0. But will it make any sense?

are you saying that terrorists and their sympathisers were not affected by demonetization? Would be great to see some sources for your "debunked many times over" statement.

Terrorist and their sympathizers will be affected if demonetization happens again, like anyone else who has cash. The bigger question is whether it has helped in curtailing the menace.

There was a large number of fake new bills in circulation within 3 months. So the answer is, no, it had almost no impact in curtailing the menace. But hey look, the fruit vendor is accepting PayTM wallet (a large chunk of which is owned by China) so it must have been a huge success.

Huge success for PayTM indeed.

Sure they were. As were prostitution rings and other such things. They were affected because everything was. I remember at the time, people hailed this as a "surgical strike". Given the collateral damage, it was more like indiscriminate carpet bombing.

India's economy is hugely cash driven and to suck out 80% of that in a single night was an economic shock. The aims were changed repeatedly. Black money, digital transactions, recapitalising idle assets etc. I don't really buy any of that but I'm willing to give the government the benefit of the doubt. Now that it's, for all practical purposes, proven to be a failure, they should accept responsibility for it.

The number of terrorist attacks has only increased after demonitisation. There is no evidence whatsoever for even a single point made in support of demonitisation. The use of cash has increased, counterfeiting of notes is still high, terrorists are not out of cash etc.

https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/less-cash-less-terrorism-mor...

Digital payments had a small spike, but I think it sort of died down after 2-3 months. Now I do not find many small vendors/businesses taking digital payments.

On the contrary, I find almost every small vendor accepting digital payments. This is from personal experience.

> 1. Literally Every nook & corner shop now accepts digital payments

At what cost? Was it worth the lives that were lost?

> 2. I have seen cash-distribution by candidates during elections to influence votes! They were mostly absent in the immediate subsequent state elections.

Because you diligently monitored every single election personally after this fiasco? And you also have certain guarantees on why this won't happen again?

>3. Many "Poor" people made extra money by queuing in the line for "Rick" people.

Oh nice. Should we add this to the tally of 10 million jobs that were to be generated by the present government?

>4. Terrorist activity immediately stopped all over the place because they are mostly cash sponsored.

Just look at what has happened in Kashmir since, and whether the situation is better or worse. How has immediately stopping the terrorist operations helped?

> 5. Situation normalized within 3 month.

Get out of your bubble. http://knnindia.co.in/news/newsdetails/msme/small-businesses...

> 6. Many of counterfeit presses in neighboring countries stopped working for some time at least. Irrelevant AND wrong. From [1], "9254 Fake Indian Currency Notes (FICN) of newly introduced Rs 2000 were seized between November 9, 2016 and July 14, 2017, "

I'll leave the cringeworthy remark you made towards the end alone. I'm sure you are used to losing your loved ones [2], [3] to the nonsense of power hungry idiots, others are not.

[1] http://www.zeebiz.com/india/news-govt-seizes-rs-255-crore-in...

[2] http://naradanews.com/2016/12/here-are-the-97-people-who-die...

[3] https://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/dem...

Arguing uncivilly like this will get you banned on Hacker News, regardless of how right your argument is (or you feel it is). If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and follow the rules from now on, we'd appreciate it.

Can you please point out the "uncivility" in my reply?

Edit: I did read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Pointing out the uncivility in your reply is exactly what dang just did.

You should not expect a sentence-by-sentence accounting of where you lost civility points. That's not how it works.

That's true in general, but sometimes it's easier than others.

You used personally acerbic language all the way through that comment, getting more abusive as you went along ("because you diligently?", "and also you have?", "Oh nice", "get out of your bubble", "your cringeworthy remark", "I'm sure you are used to losing your loved ones"). You cross into bannable offence when you do that, so please don't do it again.

Thanks, I see your point. I see how I could have been less caustic and personal in the choice of words and phrases. I don't think it ever got to the point of getting the label of being abusive.

Again, I appreciate you taking out the time to point out your concerns with the comment. I've taken a note and will be more mindful of the policy.

My skeptical question is, "Wouldn't the (I assume cell phone based) digital payments platform have happened, anyways?"

The telecom companies in the Philippines (as one example) had phone-based digital payments in 2007 or so. It was just a matter of time and critical mass of cell phone ownership, until such payments happened.

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