Black Money Khatam Hua?

Overnight, ₹500 and ₹1,000 notes would stop being legal tender, a move announced to strike at black money, fake currency, and corruption.

The RBI's own annual report put the return rate at 98.96–99.3% of the ₹15.44 lakh crore in banned notes. Almost all of it came back into the banking system, which undercuts the core premise: money that was genuinely “black,” unaccounted and therefore never coming back to a bank, was expected to stay outside the system. It mostly didn't. The RBI also found the face value of fake high-denomination notes recovered was a tiny ₹41 crore, a small fraction of the currency in circulation. The government's public framing subsequently shifted toward digital-payments adoption and formalisation rather than the original “black money” and “fake currency” rationale.

“Ask people to hand in their black money, then act surprised when 99% of it comes back white.”