India's Turn to Transform - Comment

You can check out the video of India's Turn to Transform and my brief comments are:

- Good panel. Senior and well informed. Good spread of views
- The bottom line is not very different to my views through my India Reports: that this bold and risky experiment caused acute short term pain, for expected long-term gains
- The idea of demonetisation in principle was a good one because the political mandate said PM Modi would address black money and also because India has a very high content at 87% as a cash economy, compared to a world average of 7% (according the Argentinean speaker who is Governor of Argentina’s Central Bank). 
My observation is that it could have been much better executed so that less pain was caused, especially to the poorer sections of society who were most supposed to have benefitted. For example at least 60% of the new notes could have been printed in advance and there was no need to change the size of the bank note which caused severe problems with ATMs having to be recalibrated to fit the new notes. Lack of detailed planning by the government.