-The Telegraph Darjeeling: The delay in snowfall in the upper reaches of Sikkim and Darjeeling by over a month may be a damper to snow-chasing tourists and local people, but may reflect either changing weather patterns or special circumstances this year, scientists say. Sikkim has experienced the highest increase in annual average minimum temperature across India's states, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) has documented - a finding that has puzzled sections of...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Investigations by the income tax department have found that a large number of cooperative banks have been manipulating and laundering unaccounted money post demonetisation of high denomination currency notes of Rs 1000 and Rs 500 on November 8. As the department's findings suggest a general absence of requisite regulatory oversight over cooperative banks across the country, the government feels the need for a strong regulatory framework. An...

-The Indian Express For the poor, with little cash in the first place, digital promises to ‘swipe’ them out, before their marginalisation is even addressed. Demonetisation is, by its very nature, an autocratic, coercive step. The demonetisation of November 2016 has affected every single Indian. We are, as usual, persuaded to bear the pain and suffering, to “sacrifice” for the nation. The rhetoric continues but it now seems clear that the objective...

-The Hindu Anger and frustration dominate discussions on demonetisation at a jan sunwai in Beawar, Rajasthan About five-six hundred people are crowded in and around a small shamiana-covered triangle, like the apex of the letter A. The two arms of the A are busy streets typical of small-town India, a press of pedestrians and two-wheelers punctuated with foraging cows, goats and impatient cars and tempos. Including the shopkeepers and hangers-on across the...

-The Telegraph A distinguished Ugandan social scientist of Indian origin,whom I happened to meet earlier this month at an academic conference, told me that Narendra Modi's demonetization reminded him of the fiat in 1972 of the Ugandan dictator, Idi Amin, that all Asians should quit Uganda within a period of three months. His analogy, of course, would be considered inapposite for an obvious reason: expelling people from their places of domicile,...