SOUTH ASIA RESEARCH Vol. 40(2): 1–18 Reprints and permissions: in.sagepub.com/journals-permissions-india DOI: 10.1177/0262728020915566 journals.sagepub.com/home/sar Copyright © 2020 The Author(s) DEMONETISATION, BANKING AND TRUST IN ‘BRICKS’ OR ‘CLICKS’ Masudul Hasan Adil and Neeraj R. Hatekar UNIVERSITY OF MUMBAI, MUMBAI, INDIA ABSTRACT This article seeks to advance contextualised understanding of the extent to which a cashless economy in India can be a feasible developmental goal. Initially, impressed with critiques of the sudden ‘demonetisation’ on 8 November 2016, we conducted econometric research to test how banks (‘bricks’) could be brought closer to rural people. However, this traditional approach of envisaging more banks was rapidly overtaken by the massive uptake of digital payment methods (‘clicks’) in India since 2016. Partly driven by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), this has raised new concerns and research agenda focused on people’s trust in banking and new technologies, consumer skills and people’s basic rights vis-à-vis a state that, controversially, now seems to be seeking more control within a relentlessly changing postmodern scenario. KEYWORDS: banking, cashless economy, demonetisation, development, digitalisation, India, trust, COVID-19, pandemic Introduction: Digital India’ Pace of Development and Problems of Trust Seeking to promote ‘Digital India’, the government of India has been taking energetic and increasingly far-reaching steps leading to greater digitalisation of financial trans- actions in the twenty-first century (Ligon et al., 2019: 15; Reserve Bank of India, 2019). Prominent measures include the ‘demonetisation’ of 8 November 2016, which ‘resulted in a sudden and sharp decline in the availability of cash … and a forced uptake of digital payments’ (Agarwal et al., 2019: 2). Earlier well-known measures to drive digitalisation included prominently the Aadhaar scheme, which provides a unique 12-digit identity number for every person in India, including for- eign residents. The Aadhaar card, one of the ubiquitous symbols of India’s digital economy, has now become virtually mandatory. The frequently amended Aadhaar