NEW DELHI:”Despotic and authoritarian” is how Nobel Laureate and Bharat Ratna Amartya Sen describes the decision to abruptly ban 500- and 1000-rupee notes. “The alleged objective of dealing with black money is something all Indians would laud. But we have to ask whether this is the good way to do it? This decision is about minimal achievement and maximal suffering,” Dr Sen said, appearing from Harvard University on NDTV’s The Buck Stops Here.
On November 8, in an unscheduled television address, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that just hours later, high-denomination notes would be illegal. 86% of the cash in circulation was benched in one stroke, creating a cash crisis that the PM said would take “50 days” to resolve as he asked people to bear with short-term hardship in the national interest of warring on corruption and tax evasion.
