Critiques and justifications are currently jostling for space in the raging debate over demonetisation. While the political and legal implications of the policy are doubtlessly important, the economic and social impacts of demonetisation demand a more systematic and transparent data-driven enquiry.As public policy researchers working in areas like governance, rural development and programme evaluation, we have created an open data initiative called Cashless Chronicles to collect primary data and track the effects of demonetisation on daily life and the economy.We ran our first telephonic poll for rural and urban respondents in five states — Bihar, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab and Haryana — on December 2, 2016, about three weeks after demonetisation was announced. About 3,000 people responded to questions regarding their approval of the government’s move, and what impact the policy had on their lives.About 60% of the respondents reported a reduction in their daily consumption, varying from 49% of those from rural Bihar to 73% of those in rural Punjab. Two-thirds of all respondents waited for more than an hour in queues. Punjab and Delhi residents appear to have suffered longer wait times, with at least 70% of both rural and urban respondents from these states claiming they have waited for more than an hour.About half the respondents reported an adverse impact of the policy on their income or business, with urban areas being slightly more affected. When asked about access to essential services such as health, electricity and water, about 30% of those in rural areas and one-fourth of all urban respondents reported that access to essential services was affected.We randomly called cellphone numbers from a large database via IVR (interactive voice response system). The IVRS medium allows us to sample in both rural and urban areas, given the high cellphone penetration rate . However, there might be specific demographics that remain undersampled here or systematically choose not to respond to a telephone survey.We asked respondents if demonetisation had affected their daily consumption, how much time they spent waiting in bank queues, impact on their income or business, and the impact of demon etisation on access to essential services. The results reveal a significant adverse impact of the policy in all these dimensions.Given these effects, how does programme approval look? Overall, a high 73% of respondents in rural areas, and 81% in urban areas approved of demonetisation. Without exception, approval rates were higher in urban areas than in rural for all five states. Among states, Punjab shows the smallest approval rates of 66% (rural) and 71% (urban), while UP showed the highest with close to 80% of both rural and urban respondents saying that they support demonetisation. The approval rates show that the move continues to have high public goodwill, despite the adverse effects claimed by respondents.Closer analysis reveals interesting trends when the approval rates are seen in the context of the impact on people’s lives.Respondents least impacted by demonetisation had the highest approval rates, often by very large margins, compared with those who were affected. The most critical impacts, on income and on access to essential services, tended to have the starkest effect on opinions about demonetisation. Approval rates dropped by 34 percentage points for individuals whose access to essential services (health, power, water) was affected, and dropped by 21 percentage points for individuals whose income was affected by the move. These results suggest that if people’s lives continue being disrupted, approval rates may fall substantially.Approval rate was only 50% for the 400 respondents who claimed that they waited in a bank, that their income and consumption were affected AND essential services were affected. At the same time, the approval rating was highest (at 97%) among respondents from urban areas who say that they did not have to wait more than one hour in a queue.These results should give pause to those of us who are already part of the cashless economy , and are mostly insulated from the worst of the storm, not to take lightly the adverse impacts being felt by a large section of Indian society.Over the next few weeks, we will run further rounds of IVRS surveys, as well as field surveys in various parts of the country. Cashless Chronicles will also document personal stories about people’s experiences that shed light on the way people from different walks of life are coping with the policy.The hope is that this initiative will allow for government, opinion makers and researchers to use data and have a constructive, informed conversation on demonetisation and ways to limit its adverse impacts on the most vulnerable sections of society.This article is the first in a weekly series discussing the results of this initiative. For more analysis, visit www.cashlesschronicles.info