-TheCitizen.in NEW DELHI: Perhaps no other public policy debate in post-independence India has seen as much of an “inversion of reason” on the part of the government as the demonetization debate. When critics were pointing, on the basis of government statistics themselves, to the palpable failure of the demonetization measure to achieve its purported objective, which was to cripple the black economy, the government kept harping, in its justification, on the extraordinary...

-Business Standard System in place for Aadhaar-linked payment through state but shopkeepers and consumers yet to cheer Ahmedabad: When young housewife Sarojben Rabari comes to buy rice from the Public Distribution System (PDS) shop in Ramnagar, on the northern fringes here, the shopkeeper asks her to pay by using her Aadhaar card. The woman refuses – she has neither an Aadhaar card or a bank account. She wishes to pay in cash;...

-The Hindu Business Line It should have considered universal basic income. But sadly, budgets are not seen as a means to meet socio-economic goals The Union Budget attracts considerable media hype and debate. Democracy, if understood as a contract between the state and its citizens, may have to use the budgetary process to ensure not only prosperity for all, but justice or fairness to the most disadvantaged among them as well. A rational...

-IANS Kolkata: Lack of policy directions for ensuring quality implementation of programmes makes the Union Budget 2017-18 allocations to ailing core social sectors like education and health inadequate in delivering the benefits, experts say. Schemes like Swachh Bharat-Urban and the National Social Assistance Programme saw no increase, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan got a mere 4.4 per cent rise in allocation, while the Integrated Child Development Services got an enhancement of about five per...

-Caravan Magazine Arun Kumar is an eminent economist who has been studying the black economy in India for close to four decades. His 1999 book The Black Economy in India is among the foremost accounts of the black-money problem in the country. In Understanding the Black Economy and Black Money in India: An Enquiry into Causes, Consequences and Remedies, released in February 2017, Kumar discusses the misconceptions around black money, the...