-The Times of India MUMBAI: Currency in circulation touched a new high of Rs 20.65 lakh crore on January 18, 2019, way above the pre-demonetisation high of Rs 17.97 lakh crore. The increase in currency usage points to a recovery in 'informality' in the economy as the government goes easy on goods and services tax compliance and businesses continue using cash, according to Pranjul Bhandari, chief economist, India, HSBC. The acceleration of...

-The Telegraph Setting the record straight on the Narendra Modi establishment’s pervasive data-twisting Post truth. This seems to be the only surviving truth in today’s India, a country overrun with bare-faced lies, falsehood, deceit and invented truths — statistics. Note the brazen manner in which the chief of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council, Bibek Debroy, declared recently that a new national sample survey will be conducted by the government to...

-The Indian Express Possibly the most problematic aspect of evaluating the budget is the opaqueness of the underlying data. The interest in this year’s Union budget had been high for obvious reasons. It being an election year, there were expectations of a major spending package focused on struggling sectors such as agriculture. The budget didn’t disappoint as the finance minister announced an income support programme for farmers, raised the tax-free income...

-TheWire.in The new vision wants youth to figure out education and skills on their own but still expects them to be the drivers of economic progress. Piyush Goyal, presenting the interim budget, called it a road map for peoples’ development – a fitting description for an election year budget. Accordingly, it contained the expected sops to farmers (income support), to the middle class and home owners (increase in income tax and rental...

-The Telegraph Check out numbers for transfers to states, GST collections and income tax Finance minister Piyush Goyal tried to make people happy with his maiden budget ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, but ended up serving on a platter ammunition that chief ministers such as Mamata Banerjee, Arvind Kejriwal, H.D. Kumaraswamy and N. Chandrababu Naidu are likely to make full use of in the hustings. The campaign managers of the opposition parties...