-The Hindu Business Line Aadhaar does more damage than good in welfare programmes It is widely believed that Aadhaar-Based Biometric Authentication (ABBA) is necessary to improve the delivery of welfare programmes such as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA), Public Distribution System (PDS), social security pensions, and so on. This is a misconception. We have been studying these programmes for a decade, focusing mainly on the source of leakages and...
More »SEARCH RESULT
Save the pulse farmer, here's how -Ashok Gulati
-The Financial Express The minimum that the govt can do is to remove all restrictions on a free market for pulses Last year, roughly at this time, the price of tur dal (pigeon pea) in the retail market was hovering around R180/kg. Prices of other pulses were not far behind. They were all spiraling up due to back-to-back droughts during 2014-15 and 2015-16. Production of all pulses had plunged to 16.5 million...
More »MSPs should have an expiry date, but job is tough: Arvind Subramanian
-PTI New Delhi: Chief Economic Advisor (CEA) Arvind Subramanian today took the line that the minimum support price on foodgrains for farmers should not continue forever and there should be an "expiry date". "Minimum support price (MSP) originally came into being because we had a big problem of lack of self-sufficiency in foodgrain production. It (MSP) was used as means of providing incentives to farmers. It has been successful. We no longer...
More »PMO Has No Information on Officials Consulted Before Demonetisation
-PTI New Delhi: There is no information available about officials whose views were taken before the decision to demonetise high-value currency notes was announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on November 8, the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) has said. The PMO also refused to answer a query on whether the chief economic advisor (CEA) and the finance minister were consulted before the sudden announcement was made, saying the query does not come...
More »Demonetisation damage greater than its benefits, says Kaushik Basu -Arup Roychoudhury
-Business Standard On day-2 of the demonetization drive, serpentine queues have reported from banks and ATMs around the country World Bank Chief Economist and India’s former chief economic advisor Kaushik Basu said that the Narendra Modi government’s demonetization drive was not ‘good economics’ and that the damage it causes will be greater than its benefits. “GST was good economics; the demonetization is not. Its economics is complex & the collateral damage is likely...
More »