“This is an absurd, thoughtless move, and no one in the world has a good word for it. Every major newspaper and economist has condemned it,” the Indian Express quoted former finance minister Palaniappan Chidambaram as saying today. He said the government should have at least consulted Yashwant Sinha or Manmohan Singh before going through with the move.

Chidambaram is of course trying to be too clever by half. Sinha is not an economist and it was under Singh that proliferation of the high denomination currency took place. During the 10 years of the United Progressive Alliance government, the country also saw the effect of the policies of Singh the economist.

As always, Chidambaram is being economical with the truth when he says “every major economist has condemned” the demonetisation move. There are, in fact, many qualified economists who have supported the move and listed various long-term benefits such as a fall in interest rates, better tax compliance, lakhs of crores of windfall for the government as informal transactions become part of the formal economy and a boost to the much-needed recapitalisation of banks battered by non-performing assets.

These are, however, long-term benefits, and Chidambaram’s former boss believes, in the words of British economist John Maynard Keynes, “in the long run we are all dead”. Policymakers, however eminent, who can’t see beyond short-term gains must probably not be consulted for a move like this.

Here are some of the top economists and commentators who have supported Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s demonetisation drive:

1) Jagdish Bhagwati

An eminent economist who is a professor at Columbia University, Bhagwati co-authored a piece for the Times of India (13 December) with Pravin Krishna, Professor of International Economics at Johns Hopkins University, and Suresh Sundaresan, Professor of Finance at Columbia Business School, advocating the withdrawal of specific currency notes. Here’s what they wrote: