-The Hindu To overcome currency shortage at weekly markets, they are banking on the age-old practice CHAMPAGUDA (VISAKHAPATNAM DISTRICT): “What will we do with the Rs.2,000 note, which is a very big amount for us? As we don’t know how to exchange the demonetised note of Rs.500 in banks, we exchange it for Rs.400 from middlemen (called sahukars) in shandies (weekly markets),” says Kinusudi Kamala. She is among the many tribal women who...

-Business Standard GDP the only variable where the current government has kept pace with the previous one Mumbai: The Narendra Modi government needs to grow economy at twice the speed in its second term to catch up with the economic performance of the previous United Progressive Alliance-II (UPA-II) government and even faster if it wishes to trounce UPA-I’s record. For example, the manufacturing sector needs to grow at a compounded annual growth rate...

-The Hindu Only Chandrababu Naidu and Shivraj Singh Chauhan will remain members Bihar’s Nitish Kumar, Tripura’s Manik Sarkar and Puducherry’s V. Narayanasamy have refused the Narendra Modi government’s invitation to join a sub-committee of Chief Ministers on digitisation and cashless transactions. The panel is tasked with suggesting possible ways to ease problems in the wake of the Centre’s demonetisation decision, sources in the Janata Dal (United), the CPI(M) and the Congress confirmed. The panel...

-AlJazeera.com For girls and women from the Perna caste, entering the sex trade is a normal next step after marriage and childbirth. New Delhi: When Sita* comes home in the morning, her husband is usually still asleep. She has worked THRough the night, selling sex on the highways tracing Delhi's periphery, but she will bathe, cook breakfast, and get the children ready for school before getting some rest herself. Here, in a tumble-down...

-The Hindu Maximum government, minimum governance: Pranab Bardhan Two prominent American economists have widely different views on India’s demonetisation drive. Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff is of the opinion that the move will help tackle corruption and tax evasion, while Pranab Bardhan, Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley, believes it cannot make “much of a dent in the long-term problem of corruption or black money.” Both of them shared their...