In 1776, Adam Smith described the power of the market’s “invisible hand.” Although some economists have since overstated this power, dismissing the role of government regulation, it’s true that the market, when left to itself, often manages to meet a society’s economic needs in ways that no one fully understands. It’s a mistake for the state to disrupt it wantonly and for bureaucrats to try to do its job.

And that’s just the mistake India made last fall.

On Nov. 8, 2016, the Indian government suddenly declared that as of midnight that night all bills in denominations of 500 and 1,000 rupees would cease to be legal tender. “Demonetization,” as the policy is called, applied to 86 percent of the value of all currency in circulation. It was a state intervention of historic proportion.

The goal, the government said, was to eliminate fake Indian currency notes, force people to bring out wealth they had hidden to avoid paying taxes on it — so-called black money — and help India switch from cash to digital money. To counter the criticism that erupted, the government later pointed to other countries that had adopted similar measures in recent times, including Iraq, North Korea and Venezuela.

Nearly eight months later, a lot of data is now available to help us assess what demonetization has actually wrought. Here it is, in a word: Demonetization failed to do what it was supposed to do, and although the immediate disruption it caused was less severe than feared at first, the policy’s impact is turning out to be more protracted than initially expected.