Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time, it’s enemy action – James Bond is told, in Goldfinger. What about the 59th time? What level of hostility and malevolence would be reached by the time you escalate the iteration of adverse events to 59? That is the number of circulars the RBI has issued on demonetization, or withdrawal of specified bank notes (SBN), in RBI jargon. This changing and chopping of policy and procedure, more than any charge by the Opposition, serves to convince ordinary people that the whole demonetization project has been ill thought through and arbitrary.The 59th RBI directive on 19 December would have taken the cake, but for its pastry-winning oral retraction by the finance minister later in the day. The RBI said, on 19 December:“Tenders of SBNs in excess of Rs 5000 into a bank account will be received for credit only once during the remaining period till December 30, 2016. The credit in such cases shall be afforded only after questioning tenderer, on record, in the presence of at least two officials of the bank, as to why this could not be deposited earlier and receiving a satisfactory explanation. The explanation should be kept on record to facilitate an audit trail at a later stage. An appropriate flag also should be raised in CBS to that effect so that no more tenders are allowed.”Restricting an account holder to just one opportunity to deposit money in excess of Rs 5,000 was not part of the original scheme of things, and is probably illegal. What legal authority do bankers have to ask a citizen why he did not deposit money earlier, or, in fact, to question him at all? Confession to a police interrogator in the lock-up is not valid testimony; of what value is what an official is told in front of a bank locker?Suppose the banker is not satisfied, or chooses not to be satisfied, by the would-be depositor’s explanation. Will he be turned away? The wording of the circular suggests he would be. An arbitrary choice by a bank official can decide if a citizen can deposit his money in his bank account. Is India a free country or an example of what historians call ‘oriental despotism’? Are Indians citizens or subjects, ruled by whimsy and caprice?The whole of Monday, Twitter buzzed with condemnation of this arbitrary attempt to stem further deposit of money in bank accounts. Late in the evening, finance minister Arun Jaitley ‘clarified’ that no questions will be asked if the whole money is deposited in one go, only deposits in dribbles would attract questioning.This begs the question, should the finance minister be over-riding the RBI? Should banks follow the written circular of their regulator, the RBI, or of the finance minister’s oral clarification as reported by the media?There are more questions. Is the government scared that value of deposits in SBN would match or even exceed the value of these notes in circulation? If the values match, Demonetisation would have failed to stamp out any black money. If the value of deposits exceeds the value of de-recognised notes, that would mean that the system was tolerating, to the extent of the excess, either fake notes or criminal recirculation of soiled and phased out notes meant to be shredded.Demonetisation has caused great economic distress and inconvenience. But ordinary people have been willing, so far, to give Prime Minister Modi the benefit of the doubt. They suffer in silence, trusting that there is some sound design to the scheme and that it would meet its intended purpose. This trust is now beginning to unravel, with increasing evidence that the design of the scheme and its implementation have both been shoddy, thoughtless and subject to revision on the fly.Goldfinger planned to rob Fort Knox of its gold, with Oddjob as his hatchet man. He was foiled by an extraordinary spy. Demonetisation is no less fantastic a project. It is being foiled without any outside help, by the odd manner in which the job is being executed. We have to wait for the Happy New Year to see its actual denouement, although things have gone far beyond what qualifies as enemy action.