Indians deposit discontinued notes on the last day in a bank in Gauhati, India , Friday, Dec. 30, 2016. India yanked most of its currency bills from circulation without warning, delivering a jolt to the country's high-performing economy and leaving countless citizens scrambling for cash. Still, as Friday's deadline for depositing old 500- and 1,000-rupee notes draws to a close, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government has called the demonetization drive a great success in drawing out tax dodgers and eliminating graft. (AP Photo/ Anupam Nath)
In this article for Hard Assets Alliance, I examine the real crisis behind India’s demonetization and why the sudden withdrawal of high-value banknotes exposed far deeper cultural, institutional, and economic problems.
I discuss the chaos caused by the policy, the collapse of trust, the suffering imposed on ordinary Indians, the role of gold as money of last resort, and why India’s crisis cannot be understood through official narratives or mainstream media coverage.
