-The Hindu Business Line 'RBI working on cutting transactions costs on digital payments' New Delhi: RBI Governor Urjit Patel, who appeared before the Public Accounts Committee looking into demonetisation and its impact on monetary policy, told the panel that the country’s infrastructure is not ready for a cashless economy. He assured the panel that the RBI is working out ways to reduce transaction costs involved in digital payments. As was the case when he...
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Silently, India's supreme court has set off a chain of events that could torpedo Modi's demonetisation move -Shubhankar Dam
-Quartz India On Dec. 30, 2016, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi cajoled president Pranab Mukherjee into promulgating the Specified Bank Notes (Cessation of Liabilities) Ordinance, 2016. Two days later, on Jan. 02, 2017, the supreme court, in a separate matter, delivered a verdict that changed the law of ordinances in powerful ways. It scrubbed out old meanings, unearthed new ones, and further garrisoned judges’ hold on the constitution. A prohibitive change...
More »Punjab elections: The cycle of debts and farmer suicides blight India's grain bowl -Binayak Dasgupta and Gurpreet Singh Nibber
-Hindustan Times Hamirgarh/ Dhanaula/ Chandigarh: Gurpreet Singh and Sandeep Duggal have more than 350 friends on Facebook. At 19, Gurpreet’s profile clearly gravitates to pictures of youth – astride an Enfield motorcycle, one with a friend in the corridors of a college, and the quintessential selfie with sunglasses. Duggal’s is more subdued. In a black-and-white profile photograph, he smiles with arms folded, exuding the confidence of a young man who identifies himself...
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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