Demonetization was very beneficial for India: PM Narendra Modi
New Delhi : It was four years back when PM Narendra Modi had announced a sudden shockwave of demonetizing the Indian currency and replace it with the new currency notes. On Sunday, PM Modi defended his then decision by claiming that it helped in reducing the corruption and increasing the transparency.
On November 8, 2016, with four hours' notice, PM Modi had announced the decision to ban Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes from midnight.
That time it was highly criticized as people had to stay in bank and ATM queues for hours to withdraw the new currency notes, leading to end of many small scale cash based businesses.
In 2016, PM Modi had urged people of India to bear the pain for 50 days and asked for any punishment if the situation does not improves in the set amount of time.
It took months for people to get the cash they needed and India's annual economic growth slid from 8.25 per cent in 2016 to 5.02 per cent in 2019, according to the World Bank.
On the fourth anniversary of the decision on Sunday, PM Modi tweeted:
However, the move did not go as intended and 99.30 per cent of the total banned notes managed to return to Reserve Bank of India.
The government, however, has stubbornly defended the move even in the face of scorching opposition criticism.
The ruling BJP on Sunday said demonetisation was an "attack" on corruption and black money that were rampant during the "lost decade" of the Congress-led UPA government.
It resulted in cleaning up of the economy, formalisation of the informal sector and revenue aggregation, BJP spokesperson Rajeev Chandrasekhar said.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi offered a different take, saying the move was aimed at helping a few of PM Modi's "crony capitalist friends" and "destroyed" the Indian economy.
