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Comment by WheelsAtLarge | Hacker News Reader

I would say that it's too early to tell. I think a better gage is the increase in tax compliance over the next few years. If the treasury gets an increase in money then I would think it was worth it for the government and society. People hate to pay taxes but if you go to a country where people avoid taxes you'll see an infrastructure that's just awful. I rather live in a country where people are willing to pay their share.

I would also look at the increase of money other than cash. People love cash but a good banking system is vital to start small businesses to help people out of poverty.

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It is inherently immoral and indefensible to deprive poor people - a majority of India - the right to money they worked hard to earn. You can't defend it on any moral grounds whatsoever.

The RBI still has to take out public interest advertisements featuring top cricketers to convince people to open bank accounts. Because if you were poor, you kept your money in cash, and after DeMo, your trust in the government is even lower than it was before.

In my opinion deMo succeeded in all but the claimed main objective, which was removal of black money.

Yes it did succeed in rigging the UP elections in favour of the BJP.

Well that’s also hard to quantify- as you recall demo had so many as how reasons tacked on every other day.

Day 1- This is to remove black money!

Day x - removal of counterfeits! Please bear with us.

Day y - cashless economy !

And I vaguely remember there being some other reason(s) which were added later.

This was a farce.

But it does show how deeply Indians feel about corruption and wealth inequality.

Most people who had "black money" deposited their cash with albeit with a heavy penalty.

The government allowed people to deposit their cash, but taxed it something like 50-70% if it had NO accounting at all.

This is false. According to the Income Tax department's own admission, it could only get ~1100 people to pay such a penalty between April and November 2017. I've cited a source for this in another reply to you above.

Most people with black money exchanged their currency notes at a 10% to 20% cost via services that laundered via corrupt employees at banks or routing through newly opened accounts of poor people.

> I would say that it's too early to tell

Except it's really not. It's been two years and 100+ lives have been lost. Not to mention the countless man hours and productivity wasted. The decision was condemned from the get go - even discouraged by the then Indian central bank chief.

The increase in the tax base in 2016-17 was 14% which is exactly the same as from 2013-14. That is to say that the tax base did not increase dramatically after demonitisation.

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