-The Telegraph Guwahati: The World Bank has warned the Assam government that the loan amount sanctioned for the Assam State Roads Project may be slashed if the pace of implementation does not improve by March 2017. In the implementation status and results report of the project, released on December 21, the bank said the Assam State Roads Project is unlikely to achieve the project development objective due to poor progress and the...

-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...

-PTI Announces a fine of Rs. 25,000 on each incident of bulk waste burning The National Green Tribunal (NGT) on Thursday imposed a complete ban on burning of waste in open places and announced a fine of Rs. 25,000 on each incident of bulk waste burning. “We direct that there shall be complete prohibition on open burning of waste on lands, including at landfill sites. “For each such incident, violators, including project proponent, concessionaire,...

-The Telegraph Nagpur: A special investigation team will probe the alleged harassment of poor women borrowers in Maharashtra by loan recovery agents of micro-finance institutions, the state government announced today after month-long street protests and an Assembly debate. Junior home minister Deepak Kesarkar assured an agitated Assembly that the state was considering a law similar to one Andhra Pradesh had enacted in 2011 to regulate the MFIs' lending and loan recovery practices. About...

-Hindustan Times Plight of the migrants: Jobless labourers return home after demonetisation Twenty-three-year-old Avinash Kumar is planning to postpone his sister’s marriage. The money he had saved, working at a sweatshop in New Delhi’s Mongolpuri, is all but gone. Kumar lost his job in about two weeks from the time Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a ban on Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, in a move that he termed as the biggest-ever...