-TheWire.in In November, after a very cogent public speech on India’s rivers, he was completely exhausted and in pain. But that he came anyway showed his dedication. “I need to go and pay respect to the people fighting for India’s rivers” insisted the weak Gandhian, barely able to walk, on November 28. In his speech at the India Rivers Week’s inaugural ceremony on that day, Anupam Mishra, with his characteristically wry humour,...

-The Hindu No absentee voting rights for domestic migrants till foolproof technology in place, says Commission Noting that “there is an emergent need to link Aadhaar with the electoral details of voters”, the Election Commission of India has given a mixed response to the Supreme Court on providing absentee voting rights, like electronic voting and proxy voting, to over 300 million domestic migrants in the country, saying there is no foolproof mechanism...

-Business Standard States sent initial queries for research to NIPFP in Feb-March; Work on research started around July New Delhi: Months before demonetisation, in February-March, the Madhya Pradesh and Haryana State Governments had approached the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP) to evaluate Pune-based NGO ArthaKranti’s proposals, which include the withdrawal of high-denomination notes. The initial queries for conducting the research from the two Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) State Governments went...

-TheWire.in The official line seems to be, ‘Show me your money but I won’t show you my records’. New Delhi: While the Reserve Bank of India has been forthcoming in placing on its website the minutes of meetings of all committees that provide it with advice, an RTI activist has accused it of deliberately withholding information on the recent demonetisation exercise. Seen against the backdrop of a top finance ministry official –...

-Livemint.com Economist Esther Duflo on demonetisation impact, role of randomized control trials in policymaking, low priority assigned to health and education in India New Delhi: India’s demonetisation of high-value currency notes is a dramatic example of a policy announcement made without any serious thought given to implementation, said Esther Duflo, one of the leading development economists of the world and a professor at the department of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of...