Ucnews.in references Steve Forbes’ scathing denunciation of the immorality of demonetization, one of the few pieces in the media that gets to the nub of the matter: this is not about poor implementation or lack of foresight; this is about a fundamental violation of basic rights:

Steve Forbes, in a no-holds-barred column, has said: “What India has done to its money is sickening and immoral.” Well that’s just the title of the column.

Forbes has written, and it must be quoted: “India’s government perpetrated an unprecedented act that is not only damaging its economy and threatening destitution to countless millions of its already poor citizens but also breathtaking in its immorality.”

Further: “Not since India’s short-lived forced-sterilization program in the 1970s – this bout of Nazi-like eugenics was instituted to deal with the country’s ‘overpopulation’ – has the government engaged in something so immoral. It claims the move will fight corruption and tax evasion by allegedly flushing out illegal cash, crippling criminal enterprises and terrorists and force-marching India into a digitized credit system.”

“India is the most extreme and destructive example of the anti-cash fad currently sweeping governments and the economics profession. Countries are moving to ban high-denomination bills, citing the rationales trotted out by New Delhi. But there’s no misunderstanding what this is truly about: attacking your privacy and inflicting more government control over your life.”

“What India has done is commit a massive theft of people’s property without even the pretense of due process – a shocking move for a democratically elected government.”

Steve Forbes has not held back. He has said that by “further impoverishing the least fortunate among its population and undermining social trust, thereby poisoning politics and hurting future investment, India has immorally and unnecessarily harmed its people, while setting a dreadful example for the rest of the world”.

In other words, Forbes is saying that India has just demonstrated how it feels to commit a financial genocide with élan, turning the entire country into a laboratory of extremely unethical fiscal eugenics experiments, turning citizens to guinea pigs of monetary mayhem.

However, the cheerleaders of the prime minister are busy positing this as a global conspiracy against India, a concerted attempt to write off a move that is morally superior because ostensibly it would purge the country of wrongdoers such as black money hoarders and terrorists using counterfeit notes. Those claims have been razed to dust already.

Bloomberg: DoneReuters : DoneForbes: DoneWSJ: DoneFT: DoneAnyone left in International Financial Media who is NOT anti-demonetization??

— Yashwant Deshmukh (@YRDeshmukh) December 23, 2016

But what is terrifying is the meekness expected of citizens en masse at present. Any Indian echoing Forbes, and there are many, would be branded as an anti-national.”