A decade later, however, the government has opted for low-key approach to mark the occasion. There seems to be little appetite to revisit the exercise that continues to invite debate.

A source on condition of anonymity told The Secretariat that the government is not keen on marking the 10th anniversary of the demonetisation. “Amid other challenges that hit the world, the focus now is to look ahead with policies that will make a difference in the future,” he said.

The exercise led to acute shortage of cash choking businesses. The worst impacted were the micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs).  

The numbers actually make for an interesting story.

Currency in circulation has climbed to Rs 41.23 trillion, compared with Rs 15.44 trillion in 2016. In other words, despite the big push towards a less-cash economy, cash has made quite a comeback.

The ATM story is equally interesting. From around 2.12 lakh ATMs in 2016, the number has risen to over 2.5 lakh today.

Key Objectives-Work in Progress

The country’s once buzzing parallel economy is not completely dead either, though the scale, according to reports has shrunk driven by measures such as goods and services tax (GST) and the other regulatory requirements such as quoting of the permanent account number, integrating and tracking of large scale transactions among others.

That said, there is no formal estimate of the size of the black economy.

Parallel Economy

Meanwhile, central bank data revealed that of the ₹15.42 trillion worth of ₹500 and ₹1000 notes in circulation on 8 November 2016, as much as ₹15.31 trillion or 99.3% came back to the system. The black money was hardly eliminated.

Some of the cash deposited by banks post-demonetisation may have been taxed or investigated later. However, it weakened the claim that demonetisation had permanently trapped large volumes of black money. It was argued that much unaccounted wealth was held not as cash but in real estate, gold, benami assets, and other forms, which demonetisation failed to unearth.

The impact of the decision on terror funding cannot be measured either.

As regards terror activities, they have continued even after demonetisation. India witnessed major terrorist attacks at Pulwama (2019), Pahalgam (2025) and Red Fort (2025). This is in addition to various terrorist attacks in Jammu and Kashmir and Maoist activities in other parts of the country post 2016.

As far as detection of fake currency notes is concerned, the RBI’s Annual Report said that during 2016-17, 7,62,072 pieces of counterfeit notes were detected in the banking system, of which 95.7% were detected by commercial banks.  The detection of counterfeit notes was 20.4% higher than the previous year.

The banking system, however, is yet to get rid of fake currency notes. The number of counterfeit notes detected by the banking system has remained above 200,000 in the last three years.

India’s Digital Economy

Ten years on, demonetisation did fundamentally change India's cash habits.

Digital transaction which formed a minuscule ratio of the entire payments mode then is a dominating factor today.

Today, digital transactions are in vogue—be it your local vegetable vendor or a marquee upmarket store or your cab driver.

“It was the demonetisation exercise, which pushed digital transactions and eventually the digital public infrastructure (DPI) went on to become an identity for the country,” a retired official who was part of the finance ministry team during the exercise told The Secretariat.

In 2016-17, the annual transaction volume stood at just 2 crore. The number in 2025-26 went up to 24,162 crore outlining an almost 12,000‑fold surge. According to an official statement, transaction value too has risen from Rs 0.07 lakh crore in 2016-17 to about Rs 314 lakh crore in 2025-26 – roughly 4,000‑fold increase.

Shaktikanta Das, Principal Secretary-2, Prime Minister’s Office and Hasmukh Adhia, Principal Advisor to Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel along with then financial services secretary Anjuly Chib Duggal were part of the core team that helped the country in navigating through the major exercise.  

The demonetisation exercise also led to the launch of Rs 2000 currency note. It was intended to re-monetise the economic in quick time. The Rs 2000 currency notes were withdrawn from the circulation by the RBI in May 2023, though they continue to be legal tenders.

Demonetisation In Venezuela 

Interestingly, in December 2016, Venezuela decided to follow India’s formula of demonetising its high value currencies. The Venezuelan government under its then President Nicolas Maduro decided to scrap it high value 100-bolivar note and provided only 72 hours to its citizens to exchange or deposit them, a measure that was expected to address the "mafias”. However due to the widespread chaos, the measure was withdrawn.

As India looks back at the mammoth exercise, the outlined four main objectives of the demonetization—to curb corruption, counterfeiting, terror funding and blackmoney, can at best be described as ‘work in progress.’

The question that was asked by experts then and will continue to be asked: Is there no better way to deal with the menace of black money than to scrap 86 per cent of the nation's currency?