NEW DELHI: If the government is to be believed, demonetisation has not been a failure, despite the return of 99 per cent of the banned notes. They still claim it has been a success.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, speaking on the day the Reserve Bank of India or RBI released data showing only 1 per cent of the cash did not end up with the banks, said, "The real objects of demonetisation were formalisation (of the economy), attack on black money, less-cash economy, bigger tax base, digitisation, a blow to terrorism."
We fact-checked one set of those claims - on digitisation, the widening of the tax base and fake currency - here, to find they do not add up.
Even the remaining benefits of the notes ban do not quite stand the test of scrutiny.
Data from 10 months before the notes ban (January-November 2016) and the 10 months after shows a 38 per cent rise in the number of terrorist incidents in Jammu and Kashmir. The number of security personnel killed has risen by 2 per cent.
In Naxal-affected states, terror incidents are down 45 per cent but the number of security personnel killed is up a whopping 82 per cent, according to data from the South Asia Terrorism Portal or SATP.
It's also unclear how the government has spoken of a greater formalisation of the economy, thanks to the notes ban. No data has been released so far to back that claim.
