This is absolutely true. On the flip side, digital currency has also led to much more reliable disbursement of funds to the actual beneficiaries of those funds.

This is absolutely true. On the flip side, digital currency has also led to much more reliable disbursement of funds to the actual beneficiaries of those funds. This has been a dramatic change. Western (and even a lot of Indian) media likes to paint a lot of Modi’s support based on his religious discrimination, but in reality that’s only a tiny fraction of the support he enjoys. Most of his support comes from the fact that, for example, even as demonetization has probably led to India’s GDP being far smaller than it would have been otherwise, many poor people are still better off because funds and services that would in the past have largely been eaten up by political and administrative intermediaries actually make it to the people. And a large part of that is the result of some of the problematic measures like the central identification numbers and the digitization of money.