Wasn't that contemperaneously viewed to be a disaster?
I have to wonder if there was a unspoken real reason they did it, because it was obvious anybody with lots of demonitized bills would farm out the redemption if necessary, and wikipedia reports 99.3% of notes were redeemed. Maybe the 0.7% was (some of) the black money that was targetted, or maybe that's a normal amount of lost and damage beyond redemption.
Otoh, maybe there was some highly classified but credible advance notice that the crimimal underground was about to start printing credible 500 INR notes en masse.
I have to wonder if there was a unspoken real reason they did it, because it was obvious anybody with lots of demonitized bills would farm out the redemption if necessary, and wikipedia reports 99.3% of notes were redeemed. Maybe the 0.7% was (some of) the black money that was targetted, or maybe that's a normal amount of lost and damage beyond redemption.
Otoh, maybe there was some highly classified but credible advance notice that the crimimal underground was about to start printing credible 500 INR notes en masse.