There are reports from all over the country that the recent decision by the government to demonetise currency notes of Rs. 500/- and Rs. 1000/- denomination has affected everyone. However the consequence of this financial measure is lopsided and it will be mainly borne by the farmers, informal sector workers, women and the financially excluded.   Please check the links/ urls below this news alert to know everything about demonetisation. Till a few...

-Hindustan Times New Delhi: The demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 banknotes is unlikely to help the government suck out black money from the economy as hoarders keep a tiny portion of their ill-gotten wealth in hard cash, going by income-tax data. Cash recovery has been less than 6% of the undisclosed income seized from tax evaders, shows an HT analysis of data from tax raids from financial year 2012-13 onwards. In...

-Hindustan Times Kolkata/ Darjeeling/ Guwahati: More than five lakh workers in West Bengal’s biggest labour-intensive industries of tea and jute have not got wages since Wednesday when the union government withdrew two high-denomination currency notes. A similar predicament exists in neighbouring Assam and the rest of the Northeast, which has tea estates in remote areas where currency notes will take days to arrive. In Bengal, owners of several tea gardens and jute mills...

-Hindustan Times Nabha: After a tumultuous demand for alternatives to stubble-burning, the departments seem to have come into action. Officials are visiting the farmers, who gave up stubble-burning and adopted alternative methods on their own, to see the viability of the methods. The agriculture development department highlighted a new instrument made by New Gurdeep Combines, which is fixed at the back of a harvester combine. It trims the stubble into small...

Delhi's air is not fit to inhale. Experts argue that prolonged exposure to toxic air could lead to serious health hazards like heart and lung diseases, various types of cancer etc. But is it the case that the smog, which engulfed the entire National Capital Region (NCR) and many of the north Indian cities during October-November was entirely caused due to burning of firecrackers in Diwali or because of vehicular...