The answer was. not if you measured by drug use.
What were the black goods? Government bribes, needed to get anything done. Cash was greasing the wheels, not grinding them.
LA Times: An exasperating cash crunch has gripped India in the week since Prime Minister Narendra Modi took the unprecedented step of withdrawing the country’s large currency notes from circulation. Modi surprised the nation by announcing an instant ban on the 500-rupee and 1,000-rupee notes, worth about $7.50 and $15, respectively, and which account for 86% of the cash in the market.
The ban was billed as a sweeping move against corruption that would force Indians who hold large amounts of undeclared wealth to deposit the money at banks and make their assets official.
But it has stunned hundreds of millions of poor and working-class Indians who live an almost entirely cash-based existence, paying in bills for everything from rent to groceries to cellphone credit.
The plan was shrouded in such secrecy that even India’s financial institutions were ill prepared, creating long, sometimes unruly lines outside banks, ATMs and chronically understaffed post offices that are authorized to exchange the now-worthless notes and dispense new ones.
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