Union Budget 2017: Critics are wrong, shocking tax evasion figures alone justify demonetisation

Demonetisation has attracted a lot of criticism since inception. Motivated, non-motivated, justified, unjustified, economic, political. Leaving aside political disapproval which is aimed to serve a specific purpose, there are still enough rational voices who are raising reasoned critiques. Director of Centre for Contemporary South Asia, Professor Ashutosh Varshney, for instance, in a recent column in The Indian Express has called Prime Minister’s currency swap a patently “political move without an economic rationale.”

But are criticisms like these well-rounded?

During a DD News program on Thursday evening, Arun Jaitley made an interesting point while discussing the budget with author Chetan Bhagat, the host. In reply to a question that came up on India’s pathetic tax compliance, the Union finance minister said that though Indians are generally conservative in nature and “god-fearing” in their beliefs, they do not see tax evasion as a moral problem. According to the the finance minister, Indians by and large do not consider tax evasion as “cheating”, but rather an attribute of “smartness”.