 So, demonetization of November 2016 is undoubtedly one of the most important policy interventions in economic policy of India in the recent times. To begin with, the sheer number of claims that surrounded the announcement were mind-boggling. It was supposed to reduce the extent of counterfeit currency in the economy. It was supposed to eliminate the circulation of black money in the economy. It was supposed to transform the Indian economy into a cashless economy, a digital economy. So, it's obvious that an economist like me was attracted to the discussion surrounding it. One started reading and writing about it and what was very significant was that as one read more about it, as one wrote more about it, as one spoke more about it, it became increasingly clear that it was one of the most illogical and scientific and irrational economic policies ever taken in independent India. So my attention to demonetization was drawn largely by these claims, these irrationalities and an urge to actually explore these factors in greater detail. So the idea of a book on demonetization was born from this sort of an interest that I developed on the topic. The book that I am introducing and editing, we tried to put together a large number of articles published from the 1960s onwards till 2017 in the pages of the Economic and Political Weekly and the Economic Weekly, which dealt with the question of black money, tax evasion, demonetization of 1978 and the demonetization of 2017. So this book is very different from other books that have appeared on the subject already. It covers a longer time period and it also covers a larger canvas of topics compared to the other books, particularly in respect of taking a long historical perspective on the generation and evolution of the question of black money in the Indian economy. Let there be no mistake on this, demonetization's two major impacts where one it led to or it contributed to a sharp recessionary spiral in the Indian economy. The Indian economy was already slowing down by the time demonetization was announced and there is no doubt around it among economists. But what demonetization did was to push it very sharply into this recessionary spiral and that is very clear from the data on gross value added and gross domestic product released by the CSO in the over the last few months. You will actually see that even though the growth rates of gross value added appeared a bit resilient in the third quarter of 2016-17. If you take the fourth quarter of 2016-17 as well as the first quarter of 2017-18, the growth rates have dipped very sharply. The growth rate of the GDP as on the first quarter of 2017-18 year on year was about 5.6 percent. So that's the kind of recessionary spiral into which the Indian economy has moved into thanks to the demand compression induced by demonetization. The second important impact of demonetization has been on the livelihoods of people. Poor people everywhere, wage workers, women, elderly, manual workers in construction, farmers, all these are sections of the population which are significantly adversely affected by demonetization. Take each category of this population. Farmers, they were faced with very low prices for their Kharif harvest of 2016-17. They had to put in, they had to mobilize enormous amounts of money while the cash crunch was going on in order to complete their rabi sowing. The decline of prices across crops, mostly fruits and vegetables, led to a sharp fall of incomes of farmers and even though the value added in agriculture appears resilient as the official data would show, the incomes of farmers have not moved in line with the movements of the gross value added in agriculture. Look at workers in the non-agricultural sector. There has been a loss of jobs across the informal sector. There has been a disruption of supply chains in production across the board, both in the organized sector and in the unorganized sector. Large parts of the organized sector are deeply connected with the informal sector. So there has been a loss of jobs there as well. All sections of the population which you could call as either poor or vulnerable, their lives were thrown into despair and misery by demonetization. There are some aspects of demonetization which will certainly have a long-term impact. As I mentioned earlier, supply chains have been disrupted across the board in the organized and unorganized sectors. And we are not clear as to how much time it will take to rebuild these chains. Some aspects will have medium-term consequence of course because as remonetization proceeds, there will be a demand that will be generated in the economy again and some aspects of supply in terms of production and sales will indeed pick up and the economy might limp back into normalcy. The damage is certainly not temporary. The damage is long-term. Much of the damage is permanent and it is not clear at all as to when the economy will revive itself. It is not clear at all as to when these disrupted chains will actually be reinstated and the employment incomes of people will come back to pre-demonetization levels. Now, trust is the foundation on which much of the capitalist society that we see around us is structured. What demonetization did was to strike at the very roots of this trust by withdrawing the notes of 500 and rupees thousand over a short time interval of three or four hours. Now, this loss of trust where the government refused to fulfill the promise of paying the bearer the value of the currency that he or she had in hand was very significant, is very significant. The very credibility on which our monetary system has existed over the past few years has been violated and it is unclear as to when and how the Reserve Bank of India can actually come back to the people with the same amount of trust and credibility that existed pre-demonetization. So farmers were faced with very low prices and hence very low incomes. What this did was that it had a reverse multiplier impact on the rural economy of India. It fell very sharply and the sales of commodities that are sold in the rural areas fell very sharply. Trading was disrupted significantly and the rural economy of India was crippled by the cash crunch induced by demonetization. I think the full story of how demonetization impacted the rural areas of India, how it impacted the lives of farmers is yet to be analyzed and documented adequately. I think the overall macro numbers that are put out on growth rates of agriculture simply do not capture the extent of disruption of livelihoods that demonetization has created and engendered in the rural areas of India. Here is the case with non-agricultural sectors of India which is largely predominated by the unorganized and informal sectors. The employment in a range of occupations fell, very large number of production units stopped production, they were shut down and workers in these enterprises lost their jobs or were faced with very low amount of wages. Many migrant workers left pockets of immigration, went back home because of lack of jobs. So you would see, look at sectors as common as shop keeping, construction work, small trading and contract labor in even a sort of an enterprise like movie shooting for example. In a range of areas you will see from what you would otherwise consider as important to sectors that you would otherwise consider as not so important. All of these sectors were affected very adversely by the demand compression engendered by demonetization's cash crunch. And there were loss of jobs, loss of livelihoods and loss of social security for the poor and vulnerable across India. That has been the impact of demonetization on the livelihood part of the story. The victory in Uttar Pradesh and Uttaranchal allowed the Narendra Modi government to claim that demonetization was actually a success and people had accepted demonetization as a successful economic policy intervention. In my view, an analysis of how demonetization affected or influenced people's minds have to be conducted on two levels. First you have to understand that demonetization had all the ingredients of a typical right wing populist offensive and if you look closely at it, it was disguised as something like an anti-elite and pro-poor. It had very clear elements of the demonetization of the other. If you look at the countries from where the counterfeit currency was supposed to come from, the communal tinge to that demonetization of the other was very clearly visible. You could also invoke terrorism as part of the claims related to demonetization. There was also a pretense of modernity built into the narrative thanks to the ushering in of the cashless economy. All these are built into or embedded into a hyper nationalist discourse. So demonetization was not just an announcement of withdrawal of 500 rupees and 1000 rupees in notes. It was a classic right wing populist offensive which will certainly have a particular kind of impact on how people would take it, how people would perceive that kind of a measure. So we should not forget this level of analysis when we look at demonetization and how it might have influenced people's minds in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand. At a more grounded level, if you see, while the BJP did win Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand elections, it lost Punjab. It could not get a majority in Manipur or Goa. So there were examples from other states that you could always cite to show that the BJP did not have a smooth Goa at the elections in March 2017. In fact, there was a conscious downplaying of demonetization in the election campaign by the Bhartiya Janata Party. And what actually attained some kind of upper hand of predominance was not demonetization, but the whole debate related to Shamshan versus Khabaristan, Ramzan versus Diwali. These were the narratives which the BJP gave predominance to in the campaign in March 2017.