-Livemint.com The focus should be more on making the prime minister’s crop insurance scheme a success than demanding farm loans waivers from banks Last week, the Indian National Congress at the Maharashtra assembly submitted a breach of privilege notice against State Bank of India chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya for “insulting farmers and the House” by her remarks on farm loan waiver. The leader of the opposition in the state assembly, Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil,...

-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...

-The Hindu The Supreme Court’s verdict that ordinances are subject to judicial review, and do not automatically create enduring effects, places a timely check on a power rampantly abused by governments On January 2, in one of many judgments delivered on its first working day of the year, the Supreme Court, in Krishna Kumar Singh v. State of Bihar, made a series of pronouncements with potentially huge implications for the future of...

-The Hindu Centre for Politics and Public Policy Prime Minister Narendra Modi's announcement demonetising high denomination notes on November 8, 2016, will do little to address the prime objective of flushing out black money but will adversely affect the economy in the short term, especially the informal sector, which is predominant in India, says M. Govinda Rao, a Member of the Fourteenth Finance Commission and Emeritus Professor, National Institute of Public...

-TheWire.in The report shows that barring Pakistan, the rest of South Asia has also ranked well in implementing RTI laws with only Bhutan yet to enact one. India has slipped one point down to fourth place on the global RTI (Right to Information) Rating index that provides a comparative assessment of the national legal frameworks of 112 member countries with respect to the right to information. The rating was developed and applied...