An analysis of publicly available data suggests that 98.8% of demonetised currency was returned to the Reserve Bank of India by 13 January 2017. The data suggests a sharp slowdown in the remonetisation process in mid-December 2016, which reached only 80% of what was demonetised by the end of April. Clearly, remonetisation has been far too slow, and its consequences on the informal economy, though invisible to official data, are a matter of serious economic, political and social concern.
