NOTE BAN, 3 YEARS ON...

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on November 8, 2016, demonetised ~500 and ~1,000 notes, sucking out 86 per cent of all currency notes in the country. The objectives, the government said, were unearthing black money, cracking down on counterfeit currency, and choking terror financing. Three years later, Business Standard analyses the impact of the note ban on important sectors of the economy

JOBS

In 2017-18, unemployment rate was 6.1% — a 45-year-high

REAL ESTATE

Total number of developers in the top 9 Indian cities shrunk by over 50% by 2017-18

TAX FILING

The number of taxpayers increased to 84.52 million in 2018-19, a rise of 38% over 61.38 million in 2015-16

FACTORY INVESTMENT

Investment in the country’s factories contracted 10.3% in 2016-17, showing their worst performance since 2002-03

FARM INCOME

Farm income from cultivation as well as wages of labourers continued to contract from 2016-17 to 2018-19, despite above-normal monsoon in some of the years

DIGITISATION

Digital transactions registered an increase of 440% since demonetisation. The Centre pushed for a less-cash society by increasing infrastructure to allow digital payments. In most tier-ii and tier-iii towns, digital payments doubled since the note ban. Global tech giants such as Google, Whatsapp, to a few of the nation’s biggest mobile wallets, including Paytm, Mobikwik, all adopted the digital payments system around the time demonetisation took place