Who were the men and women Prime Minister Narendra Modi consulted before banning the big notes? The answer to that question is hard to find but Business Standard spoke to bureaucrats and politicians to piece together what went behind the decision of November 8. Bureaucrats hardly spoke initially, but as queues got longer outside banks and ATMs went cashless, there were murmurs in the corridors of power that demonetisation was executed without much thought to details.

Some officials, who were now firefighting, confided in whispers that they were not kept in the loop. A source told ...