-The Hindu Centre for Politics and Public Policy Prime Minister Narendra Modi's announcement demonetising high denomination notes on November 8, 2016, will do little to address the prime objective of flushing out black money but will adversely affect the economy in the short term, especially the informal sector, which is predominant in India, says M. Govinda Rao, a Member of the Fourteenth Finance Commission and Emeritus Professor, National Institute of Public...

-Livemint.com Nandan Nilekani, one of the brains behind the Unified Payments Interface, on the near-term challenges of going cashless While the government’s decision to scrap Rs500 and Rs1,000 bank notes has been met with resistance from some quarters and been called too abrupt, Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani backed it, saying it was needed to speed up the move to a cashless economy. “There is no question that this is a very bold...

-The Hindu The State has taken the lead in providing some essential and basic health-care training to these informal providers. In West Bengal, nearly 3,000 quacks — informal health-care providers with no formal medical education — are to be trained for six months. The crash course in medicine, and to be conducted by 130 trained nurses, is to begin from December 1. The objective is to provide these informal providers with a minimum...

-The Hindu If concurrent Lok Sabha and Assembly elections were to be a reality, it would go against the political diversity essential for addressing the social diversity of India. Though spoken about for quite a few years, simultaneous elections for the Lok Sabha and State Assemblies seem to be fast on their way to becoming a matter of national concern. This proposal is not only being discussed in the television studio, but...

-The Hindu The pursuit of full employment of labour cannot primarily rely on domestic private investment, much less FDI. Only public investment will steady us in the long run. We are increasingly told that the inflow of capital — particularly the foreign direct investment (FDI) variety — increases employment levels and contributes to economic growth. In a rare interview given to The Wall Street Journal in May, Prime Minister Narendra Modi reinforced...