-The Telegraph Lucknow: Puran Sharma needed cash to take care of his family's daily expenses. So he went to a health camp and got a vasectomy done. The 45-year-old day labourer returned home on Friday richer by Rs 2,000, though the money didn't come in 20 hundred-rupee notes as he had hoped it would. The amount would be transferred to his bank account. If Puran was a tad disappointed, the Uttar Pradesh villager...

-Hindustan Times New Delhi: When seven days of standing in long queues outside banks yielded no results, a 35-year-old scrap dealer allegedly committed suicide by hanging from a ceiling fan at his house in northeast Delhi’s Mustafabad on Thursday night. Mohammed Shakeel was reportedly frustrated because he couldn’t exchange old notes worth Rs 5,000. He had to pay instalments of two loans as well. Shakeel’s family said he went to banks early morning,...

-The Hindu With grocers and cold storage owners refusing to accept scrapped currency notes, farmers are struggling to get potato seeds while landless labourers are forced to forgo their food. Chitra Bag and her family of six are eating less these days. They make do with one meal instead of the usual three meals, despite a gruelling 8-10 hours of work daily as landless farm labourers. Even though vegetables, grown around their...

-Frontline.in To rural India, which is already reeling under multiple crises, demonetisation has come as yet another blow. WHEN the Prime Minister made the decision to withdraw Rs.500 and Rs.1,000 notes, he did not quite factor in the impact it would have on agriculture. Despite the rhetoric the concept of digital wallets has not yet entered rural India unlike in much of the country’s urban areas, and much of rural and...

-The Hindu Children from the RTE quota are often left feeling small as equality seems to be lost in monetary disparity Thirty-two-year-old Uma Devi (name changed) is conspicuous in a crowd of parents who have come to pick their children up in swanky cars. She works as a Group D employee at a government hospital, but thanks to the 25 per cent reservation quota mandated by the Right to Education (RTE) Act,...