If India's demonetisation policy wasn't troubled enough, today's policy change made it even harder.

Indians had been given until December 15 to use the old bills at filling stations but the government rushed forward the deadline on Thursday evening, giving millions of commuters still using the old 500 rupee notes barely 24 hours to spend them...
Critics say the demonetisation policy could have been rolled out gradually and better preparations made but the government insists this was the only way to fight corruption.

Really? The only way?
First all, the demonetisation was an epic bungle.

INDIA is not the first country to introduce abrupt, drastic reform of its currency. But the precedents—including Burma in 1987, the former Soviet Union in 1991 and North Korea in 2009—are not encouraging. Burma erupted in revolt, the Soviet Union disintegrated and North Koreans went hungry. All the more reason for Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, to prepare the ground before the surprise announcement on November 8th that he would withdraw the two highest-denomination banknotes (the 500-rupee and 1,000-rupee, worth about $7.30 and $14.60). Yet he did not and the result is a bungle that, even if it does achieve its stated aims, will cause unnecessary harm...
It is a pity, then, that Mr Modi’s scheme to achieve these aims is so flawed. Banknotes are not just a way for the rich to store their wealth; they are also how the unbanked survive. As so often, the burden of this reform has fallen most heavily on the poor (see article). Over four-fifths of India’s workers are in the “informal” sector, paid in cash. Untold numbers have been laid off because their employers cannot pay them. Tens of millions have queued for hours at cash machines and bank branches, to get rid of the useless notes and get hold of some spending money.
Cash is used for 98% by volume of all consumer transactions in India. With factories idle, small shops struggling and a shortage of cash to pay farmers for their produce, the economy is stuttering. There are reports that sales of farm staples have fallen by half and those of consumer durables by 70%.

Even after the cash crunch is over it is unlikely that the economy will bounce back.
It's even caused a diplomatic conflict with Pakistan.
At the very least, this sort of hubris and incompetence should get a politician hung.

However, the real problem with India's War on Cash is that it is unlikely to achieve it's stated objective, reduce crime.

"First, it is debatable that a cashless society would mean less crime. For example, the ratio of damage caused by card fraud to the value of counterfeit notes in circulation is over 10 to 1."
Mai argues that if society were to take away cash, criminals could find new ways of moving money without detection. Here's the extract (emphasis ours):

"The available evidence suggests that restrictions on cash use will probably reduce for-profit crime but will certainly not eliminate it. Other means of storing and transferring illegally obtained assets without leaving many traces are already in use. They include the transport of other physical valuables (e.g. prepaid instruments, precious metals) as well as using false identities, criminal middlemen and shell companies to facilitate cashless transfers via regulated entities like the banking system, money transmitters or online payment service providers."

Even in Sweden, Mai argues, a society where cashlessness is incredibly popular (I visited Stockholm earlier this year and can confirm that shop assistants look at you strangely if you try and pay with a note or handful of coins) the abolition of cash won't prevent crime.
The amount of cash in circulation as a percentage of GDP in Sweden has dropped from around 3% in 2008, to roughly 1.8% now, but that hasn't stopped financial crime.
"Rather surprisingly, though, the number of reported money laundering offences increased over the past years. This could signal that money laundering is not directly related to or even dependent on the usage and availability of physical currency," Mai writes.

Let's take Kenya as an example.
M-Pesa has been a "blockbuster success".

But what's been most surprising given M-Pesa's blockbuster success—19 million of Kenya's 44 million people subscribe, including more than two-thirds of the adult population, and a quarter of the country's economy flows through the mobile-money service—is how other countries have failed to replicate that success.

What's not to love? Kenya must be a crime-free country, right? There's just one problem - thieves. They are targeting mobile phones in Kenya.
How big of a problem is this? A $3.6 Billion problem in a nation of only a $55 Billion GDP.

With that in mind, let's consider India's new cashless society, in a nation where cyber crime is up 300% in just 3 years.

"With every passing year, cyberattacks continue to escalate in frequency, severity as well as impact. In India, from 2011 to 2014, there has been a surge of approximately 300 per cent in cybercrime cases registered under the IT Act, 2000," said the Assocham-PwC joint study.
Attackers can gain control of vital systems such as nuclear plants, railways, transportation or hospitals that can subsequently lead to dire consequences such as power failures, water pollution or floods, disruption of transportation systems and loss of life, noted the study.

Despite the dramatically rising cyber crime rate, only 3% of cyber criminals are convicted.
Which leaves one to wonder if, instead of fighting crime, demonetisation might unleash a crime wave.

As India attempts a transition to a cashless society, cyber security experts raise serious concerns about India's preparedness. As Prof Debabrata Das, who was with the Centre's National Information Infrastructure version 2.0 (NII 2.0), puts it: "It's like we are fighting AK-47s with lathis."
With the lack of sophisticated defence systems, experts say India is prone to attacks that could cause public chaos...
Telecom expert Ravi Visvesvaraya Prasad says: "There are many concerns and the environment in which our transactions take place isn't secure. The SMSes we get as one-time passwords, for example, are not encrypted. Networks cannot be trusted, which means there are chances of losing money in transition."

Cyber crime is larger than traditional crime (such as robbery, muggings, etc).
Cybercrime is now more profitable than the drug trade.
Cyber crime is the world's largest crime problem.

Today, the amount of money being taken in cyber-heists, both in banking and elsewhere, has reached staggering levels. One estimate put this amount at $3 trillion overall for 2015, while a report from the market-intelligence company Cybersecurity Ventures expects it to double by 2021.

Cyber crime will benefit the most from a cashless society.
So why is this Global War on Cash spreading everywhere?

Italy has made it illegal to pay cash for anything worth more than €1,000 ($1,116), while France cut its limit to €1,000 from €3,000 last year. British merchants accepting more than €15,000 in cash per transaction must first register with the tax authorities.

It's even come to the United States.

With the passage of House Bill 195 into law, the State of Louisiana has banned the use of cash in all transactions involving secondhand goods....
Last month it was reported that the U.S. Justice Department ordered bank employees to snitch to the cops on customers who withdrew $5,000 or more. In a speech, assistant attorney general Leslie Caldwell exhorted banks to “alert law enforcement authorities about the problem” so that police can “seize the funds” or at least “initiate an investigation”.

Simply put, the War on Cash has much to do with fighting crime as the TSA giving Grampa an anal-cavity search in the airport has to do with fighting terrorism - absolutely nothing.
This is all about control. Removing your ability to live any part of your life anonymously is the means to achieve it.
Just look at who is pushing for it.

Top of the list are the world’s central banks, which have the perfect motive for whacking cash: i.e. to make negative interest rates an eternal — or at least, more enduring — reality. And the only way to do that is to stop depositors from cashing out, as the Bank of England chief economist Andrew Hadlaine all but admitted in 2014.
Central banks are not the only ones who dream of a cash-free world. For credit card companies, cash is the ultimate rival. As such, it’s no surprise that the likes of Visa and MasterCard are among those pushing the hardest for a cashless economy. For banks, the benefits are no less obvious, including cost cuts, greater control over the flow of customer funds, and larger fees.
As for politicians, Eurocrats and global plutocrats, including the senior servants of the IMF, World Bank and United Nations, they will enjoy even greater access to and dominion over the people’s funds. What better way of controlling the people than by controlling their access to the money they need to survive? It would amount to what Martin Armstrong calls “totalitarian control over the economy.”
These powerful agents have already created a perfect platform for achieving their dream: The Better Than Cash Alliance (BTCA), a UN-hosted partnership of governments, companies and international organizations. Its purpose, in its own words, is “to accelerate the transition from cash to digital payments globally through excellence in advocacy, knowledge and services to members.”
The Better Than Cash Alliance’s membership list reads like a who’s who of some of the world’s most influential corporations and institutions. They include Coca Coca, Visa and Mastercard. Apple is, for now, conspicuously absent from the list, but in its place representing the tech industry is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Also on the list are the Citi Foundation, the US Agency for International Development (USAID), and the World Saving Banks Institute, which represents 7,000 retail and savings banks worldwide.
Member institutions range from powerful private foundations — including the Ford Foundation and the Clinton Development Initiative — to a bewildering alphabet soup of UN organizations, including WFP (the World Food Programme), UNFPA (the UN Population Fund), UNPD (the UN Development Program), IFAD (the International Fund for Agricultural Development) and UNCDF (the UN Capital Development Fund).

The War on Cash is a real thing, and the most powerful in the world have an Orwellian agenda to eliminate privacy all over the globe.