Following last year’s demonetisation on 8 November, currency in circulation is down by about 25% from where it would otherwise have been. Photo: AFPAlmost a year on, India’s ban on large-denomination bills has been deemed a “total failure”. But a secondary goal—“to move toward the cashless society”, as India’s finance minister put it—still has real promise. The rest of the world, in fact, could learn a lot from this botched experiment. More powerfully, it would give central banks a new tool for boosting aggregate demand when conventional measures won’t work—significantly negative interest rates.

Source: Mint September 11, 2017 06:00 UTC