-TheWire.in Farmers in Vidarbha are being forced to incur terrible losses – by accepting lower prices, losing their perishable produce, or due to a fear of depositing cash payments in old notes in banks where they owe loan repayments. Bandu Ghormade had no choice but to accept the old Rs 500 notes from the procurement agent and a lower price of Rs 200 less for every 40 kilo crate of his freshly...

-TheWire.in A large chunk of India’s farmers continue to depend on commission agents and not formal institutions for credit, thereby relying on cash. It is now official. Demonetisation has led to an implosion of agricultural trade in the country. In the week following demonetisation, soyabean arrivals in select major states had collapsed by 87% relative to average arrivals over the week preceding demonetisation. The figures were 55% for paddy, 61% for guar,...

-The Hindu Centre for Politics and Public Policy Prime Minister Narendra Modi's announcement demonetising high denomination notes on November 8, 2016, will do little to address the prime objective of flushing out black money but will adversely affect the economy in the short term, especially the informal sector, which is predominant in India, says M. Govinda Rao, a Member of the Fourteenth Finance Commission and Emeritus Professor, National Institute of Public...

-The Hindu The proposal to extend the time limit for State-level drug regulatory approvals from four to 10 years could hit the generics market In a scathing letter to the Government of India, the Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance (IPA) took issue with what it considered to be a backdoor extension for data exclusivity norms in the country. It pointed to the recent government proposal to change the four-year time limit for State-level drug...

-The Hindu Stories of distress, following a year of drought and now demonetisation, reverberate through State BENGALURU: First, the water in their fields disappeared, and now, the cash in the market. For Rajaiah of Boovanahalli in Hassan district, the cash crunch following demonetisation has seen his yet-to-be harvested maize shrouded in uncertainty. “There are no merchants to purchase as they have no cash,” he said. There is desperation, however, as his entire produce...