I am thinking that those having huge amounts of dirty cash in those two denominations(under the mattress?) will not present some of it for a swap since they will have to explain the source?So, this will probably reset corruption rather that eradicate it?

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.

Indian media report that at least five people have died of exhaustion while waiting to change money outside banks, and that three children have succumbed to illnesses that private hospitals wouldn’t treat because their families had only old notes.

Credit and debit cards are unaffected, but only half of Indians have bank accounts. Even for those fortunate enough to find some cash — the government has set a temporary $66 daily limit for withdrawals — a newly released 2,000-rupee banknote is in effect useless for daily purchases because most merchants can’t make change.

Adding to the headaches is that the 2,000-rupee note and a new, revamped 500-rupee note are of a different size, meaning it could take weeks to reconfigure the country’s 200,000-plus cash machines to dispense them.

For now, that has made the 100-rupee note the basic legal tender for most transactions, reducing the world’s seventh-largest economy to trading largely in the equivalent of $1 bills.