-TheWire.in A report from several civil society actors has found that the Right to Information Act is not functioning as it should be. New Delhi: Two organisations working in the field of right to information assessment and advocacy and a publishing house have come together to bring out ‘Tilting the Balance of Power: Adjudicating the RTI Act for the Oppressed and the Marginalised’, which is a detailed analysis of the orders of...
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Don't let studies delay projects: Environment minister to experts -Jay Mazoomdaar
-The Indian Express In its first two years, the Narendra Modi government cleared over 2,000 projects involving investment worth Rs 10 lakh crore. Don’t delay project clearances by repeatedly asking for different studies. That was Environment Minister Anil Madhav Dave’s message to non-official expert members of the ministry’s appraisal committees. He urged them to work hard to clear the bulk of pending processes over the next three months. Around 40 expert members...
More »Jaitley's Tax Argument Isn't a Good Indicator of India's Economic Health -Suyash Rai
-TheWire.in Using tax collection numbers as signifiers of robust economic activity may be highly optimistic. One of the most Interesting questions in Indian macroeconomics today is – how are we faring since late 2016? In this article, I seek to analyse data on tax revenues and obtain some clues about the performance of the economy. In a press release published on January 9, the central government reported the following increases in tax collections...
More »Amartya Sen, Nobel Laureate and economist, speaks to Suvojit Bagchi (The Hindu)
-The Hindu The truth may ultimately prevail about demonetisation, but the government might be able to maintain the loyalty of a large part of the public for a long time, says Amartya Sen More than two months after the demonetisation, Nobel Laureate and economist Amartya Sen says that any proper “economic reasoning could not have sensibly led to such a ham-handed policy.” He predicts that the demonetisation will hit the economy quite...
More »Towards less-cash agriculture: Well before demonetisation, low credit-driven model came up in Dewas -Vivian Fernandes
-The Financial Express In Madhya Pradesh’s tribal districts of Dewas and Khargone, the NGO, Samaj Pragati Sahayog, discourages cash transactions for agricultural inputs. The Interest rates are usurious and vary according to commodities. For fertiliser, it is dheda—loan for the stuff has to be repaid 1.5 times over by the end of the harvest season. For pesticides it is sawa, or 1.25 times. Even barter can be extortionate. One quintal of...
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