Is demonetisation a failure because 99.3 percent of the Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes that were demonetised on 8 November 2016 have returned, as the RBI report, released today states? Here’s a little perspective then: exactly a year ago, a 30 August 2017 press release had already revealed that 98.96 percent of the notes had returned to banks.

The real ‘news’ is that in the past 12 months, about 0.3 percent of the demonetised notes have been either counted or discovered. There is little new and definitely nothing newsy in this number.

Clutching at the remnants of a fading memory in a political run-up to 2019 elections is not analysis; it is narrative building. Or perhaps it’s to do with being economically illiterate.

Micro changes in macro numbers is not uncommon in economics, not in India, not in rest of the world. The budget document alone has three sets of numbers – ‘budget estimates’, ‘revised estimates’ and ‘actuals’.