-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...

-Hindustan Times The government’s decision to scrap high-value currency has sent wholesale vegetable prices crashing to rock-bottom levels, bringing misery to millions of farmers hoping for good returns for their produce after two successive drought years. Onions sold for just Re 1 per kilogram in wholesale markets at Madhya Pradesh’s Neemuch and Mandsaur this week while tomatoes cost less than Rs 2 per kg in Andhra Pradesh and Chandigarh. A kilogram of cauliflower...

-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...

-Hindustan Times New Delhi: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) recommended demonetisation of 500- and 1,000-rupee banknotes hours before Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the surprise move in a televised address to the nation in the evening of November 8. The government and the RBI have kept the consultation process that led to the decision to demonetise 86% of India’s cash in circulation a closely-guarded secret. Both, however, have insisted that the...