Demonetisation: Why I think its not enough?

As the whole world, looks to India which has its Rs 500 and Rs 1000 Indian Rupee notes demonetised, I wanted to share my initial thoughts on this issue.

I got my first news notification on my iPhone stating that the two currency notes will not be worth immediately on November 8th 2016. At first, I really thought it was a hoax and a misleading news title which wanted me to click and go to some other page. So I really didn't give it much attention and forgot about it immediately. But only after 7 o'clock did I realise that the news was in fact real and Prime Minister Modi was going to address the nation in relation to demonetisation.

By the time I went out I could see long standing queues in front of ATMs and banks. Even I stood in front of a Canara bank ATM near to my hostel only to come out half way when a guy came and showed us that the ATM was dispensing only the Rs 500 Rupee notes which by then has become worthless.

According to Investopedia, Demonetisation is the act of stripping a currency unit of its status as legal tender. While I welcome the government and our Prime Minister's decision to fight black money, I don't think the issue of black money could be solved by just changing the currency notes. There are several questions which I would like to ask the government and the RBI out of which I have written a few below:

1. If RBI had known this for a long time, why wasn't it fully prepared by printing the currency notes well in advance?
2. If it has been so secret, what is the reason for the sudden increase in deposits just before demonetisation took place?
3. Banks that had shown negative deposit growth in previous quarters, suddenly had good growth rates in July-September quarter. Was there any leak of insider information?
4. What will happen to the money that will be unaccounted for after people start accumulating black money in the form of new notes?
5. I don't see the rich people standing in the long queues in front of banks and ATMs. The poor people are the ones that are most affected. The magnitude of the whole exchange process could have been anticipated by the Government and couldn't it have had good ideas to decrease the queue in front of ATMs? 

Though I have a lot of questions, I welcome this step taken by the government. But saying that by changing currency, we have almost nullified black money is totally false and laughable. To have a corruption free country, we need to have a change in our legal system and policy formulations which are stricter and more transparent. Only the normal students, traders, daily wagers and small shopkeepers are the ones getting more adversely affected. 

I really hope that the lull will be just a minor blip in our developing economy and will benefit surely in the longer run as most of the black money enters the legal financial system.