“Demonetisation I think was not a well-planned, well thought-out useful exercise. And I told the government that when the idea was first mooted.” He is being diplomatic. The truth is that it was a crazy idea dismissed by serious economists and advocated only by batty fringe groups. To push demonetisation as a cure for black money was the equivalent in economics of claiming cow urine cures cancer. We need to repeat this on every relevant occasion, because advocates of the process defended it as producing immediate pain but later gain.