-Livemint.com Middle India is largely rural and uneducated, shows the ‘Household Survey on India’s Citizen Environment & Consumer Economy’ New Delhi: India’s richest quintile accounts for 45% of aggregate household disposable income while the poorest quintile earns barely 7% of the aggregate income pie, according to the latest data from a nationally representative survey conducted this year. The Household Survey on India’s Citizen Environment & Consumer Economy (ICE 360° survey), covering 61,000 households,...

-Business Standard Indian economy is showing signs of distress all around and economists are not off the mark in their assessment When Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed the nation on November 8 and announced his government’s big move to tackle black money, currency counterfeiting and terror funding by banning old currency notes of Rs 500 & Rs 1,000, there were murmurs of protest. Since then, economists like Amartya Sen, Kaushik Basu and many...

-The Times of India In the finely balanced but lucrative economy of vegetable and fruit trade, demonetisation has had a bizarre effect. In distant rural areas, local vegetable prices — both wholesale and retail — have crashed as the oxygen of currency has been suddenly sucked out. Since the whole economy depended on cash, from transport to mandis to purchase prices, this is unsurprising. But in cities, where there is more liquidity,...

-The Hindu Maximum government, minimum governance: Pranab Bardhan Two prominent American economists have widely different views on India’s demonetisation drive. Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff is of the opinion that the move will help tackle corruption and tax evasion, while Pranab Bardhan, Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley, believes it cannot make “much of a dent in the long-term problem of corruption or black money.” Both of them shared their...

-The Hindu With grocers and cold storage owners refusing to accept scrapped currency notes, farmers are struggling to get potato seeds while landless labourers are forced to forgo their food. Chitra Bag and her family of six are eating less these days. They make do with one meal instead of the usual three meals, despite a gruelling 8-10 hours of work daily as landless farm labourers. Even though vegetables, grown around their...