-Livemint.com Nandan Nilekani, one of the brains behind the Unified Payments Interface, on the near-term challenges of going cashless While the government’s decision to scrap Rs500 and Rs1,000 bank notes has been met with resistance from some quarters and been called too abrupt, Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani backed it, saying it was needed to speed up the move to a cashless economy. “There is no question that this is a very bold...

-Livemint.com Demonetization could cause temporary pain to those who have unaccounted incomes One of the biggest issues which helped Prime Minister Narendra Modi capture power in 2014 was the promise to crack down on corruption and black money. Midway in his tenure, he has announced scrapping of currency notes of Rs.500 and Rs.1,000 to curb black money and other illegal activities such as counterfeiting of notes and money laundering. Given the fact...

-Firstpost.com Think of it as a 50-over one-day cricket match, with each day equivalent to an over. The  game has just begun. The government of India, popularly known as Modi sarkar, has just created a 50-day hawala window for those with black money – albeit in a loose sense. The term hawala is usually used for illegal trade in foreign exchange going back to the times before 1993 when India had tight...

-The Indian Express The poor adoption of a machine that can help avoid paddy stubble burning is an example of policy failure. Jalandhar/ Ludhiana: There is virtual unanimity — at least among scientists and aware farmers — that the ultimate solution to the recurrent problem of paddy stubble burning at this time of the year lies in the ‘Happy Seeder’ developed by the Punjab Agricultural University (PAU) in 2002. But more than...

-The Indian Express It will also promote indigenous research and science, incentivise pulses production, rationalise pricing. The inferno of environmental pollution that the nation’s capital and its surroundings have been witnessing has many causes, including weather conditions (thermal inversion) that facilitate the settling of particulate matter and other pollution, dust on the streets generated in part from construction activity, and vehicle-related emissions. Particularly critical is the burning of paddy after the kharif...