-Networkideas.org The basic income scheme that is in the air these days, which amounts to handing over a certain sum of money to every household to ensure that it reaches a threshold cash income, is an extremely flawed scheme. Instead of enjoining upon the state the obligation to provide essential goods and services like food, education, and health, to its citizens, it absolves the State of all such responsibility, once it...

-The Hindu Business Line If the Centre had stuck to its ‘minimum government’ promise, it may have met the note-ban goals – without the pain In a New Year’s Day interview to a news agency, Prime Minister Narendra Modi revisited his government’s demonetisation move of November 2016. Perhaps this was born of the realisation that the notebandi decision and its impact on the economy would likely define the NDA government’s term in...

-The Hindu The slowdown in private investments is visible chiefly in the informal sector, not the corporate sector It is now well recognised that there is an investment slowdown in India, which is delaying a full-blooded recovery in the economy. Private investments, the principle engine of growth, are out of steam. The fall is so severe that it has more than offset the government’s macroeconomic stimulus of increased public investments. The slowdown started...

-The Indian Express Instead of cancelling hospital licences, bring in patient centric laws, institutional capacity to enforce them. The grievous error in declaring a live baby dead by the capital’s Max hospital, following closely on the heels of Fortis hospital charging exorbitant amounts for the treatment of a seven-year-old child diagnosed with dengue, seem to have pushed things to a tipping point. The government responded by cancelling the licence of Max — a...

-The Economic Times Those of us in our sixties, including our prime minister, will remember the goli soda. You used a little wooden gizmo to push in a marble stuck in the mouth of a bottle and guzzled the sweet, fizzy drink with the marble dancing around inside. Then you felt full and happy. But it was mostly gas. It’s feeling a lot like that these days, and PM Narendra Modi must...