Note ban attacked black money, raised tax base: PM in I-Day speech

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, from the ramparts of the Red Fort, rolled out statistics to defend demonetisation, while skipping mention of a lower dividend by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) as a pitfall of this move.

In his Independence Day speech, Modi implicitly took on critics for blaming his government for not generating jobs, saying the MUDRA scheme is making youth a provider of jobs.

He said the goods and services tax (GST) has led to a 30% cut in travel time by trucks, but did not refer to the transitory problems that have led to a contraction of the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) and Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI).

He recalled that the first task of his dispensation was to constitute a special investigative team to underscore his government’s stance on corruption.

“I want to tell the countrymen proudly that we have confiscated black money worth Rs 1.25 lakh crore. The culprits would be brought to book and forced to surrender,” he said.

He said demonetisation, which followed the government’s earlier anti-black money stance, has achieved several milestones.

“The hidden black money has been brought into the formal economy. According to the research conducted by outside experts, about Rs 3 lakh crore that had never come into the banking system before, has been brought into the system after demonetisation,” he said.