This is what Bill Gates had to say on demonetisation

Amid a stormy Lok Sabha session in the Parliament, Prime Minister Narendra Modi just got a pat on his back by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. Speaking at Niti Aayog's 'Transforming India' lecture, philanthropist billionaire Bill Gates hailed the government's decision to demonetise high value currency notes.

Describing the government's recent decision to withdraw old currency notes as a bold move, Gates said demonetisation of high value denominations and replacing them with new notes with higher security features is an important step to move away from a shadow economy to a transparent economy.  

"Digital transactions will rise dramatically here. In fact, I think in the next several years India  will become the most digitised economy. Not just by size but by percentage as well," Gates added.

Gates also lauded Prime Minister Narendra Modi's financial inclusion scheme 'Jan Dhan Yojna'. Terming Aadhaar as a world class digital foundation, Gates said, "Aadhaar is an interesting case. It's something that had never been done by any government before, not even in a rich country."

"There were lots of sceptics. Sceptics about the financial viability, the technology, the citizen acceptance. But now you have something that is going to underlie all of your digital systems, whether it's banking, tax payments, tracking healthcare records, it is an incredible asset and it took a lot of bravery and good government leadership to pull that together," he added.