Harvard vs Modi; BJP victory termed a Bollywood Blockbuster

In Modi-Harvard word war, the acclaimed university got one score up Modi by unrolling an insightful critique of the demonetisation policy after PM Modi took a dig at one of the alumnis of the university in one of his election speech.  

In the article titled 'Early lessons from India's Demonetisation Experiment', the author Bhaskar Chakravorti, a public policy professor at the Tufts University, gauged the government's demonetisation move from the context of BJP's massive electoral victory in the 2017 state elections.
    
The paper published on December 14, 2016 in Harvard Business Review examined the government's demonetisation stint as poor in policy and execution, whilst the poverty stricken being its greatest victims. The article also tried to bring to light the futility of the policy in achieving its 'said' primary aim of curbing corruption in the economy, furthermore, terming BJP's electoral win as a result of the government's corrupt intention playing on the minds of mass oblivious Indian voters. 

Making a very significant point, Chakravorti stated that the declaration of the 86 per cent of the currency invalid held void as corrupt people did not hold wealth in cash, instead, the black money outflows as investments in stocks, business, real estate, assets bought in someone else's name (Benami) and jewellery. Substantiating it with the data, that only 6 per cent of the aggregate black money was detected as cash in 2015-16 tax raids.    

Further concluding that a substantial eradication of corruption from the system will require cultural, institutional and behavioural changes in the economy and the nation in the long run. 

The article also commented on the lack of resources with the Income Tax department to uncover sizeable black money in the form of benami assests and stocks among others, requiring close domestic and international interaction. The lag in the department which was completely disreagrded during the planning and execution of the demonetization scheme, has led to the government's approval to increase the IT department strength by 73 per cent by 2018. The government has also summoned an increase in the number of excise and customs employee by 81 per cent by 2018.   

Chakraborti, further in his article also questioned the Central Statistics Office's estimates of the GDP, citing it to use old and unreliable model for the calculations, concluding the article by terming, BJP's victory as 'the victory of narrative over data'.