-The Indian Express The transition from a regime of ‘downward stickiness’ to ‘upward stickiness’ has relevance beyond economic jargon. Here’s how Agricultural commodity prices in India have traditionally exhibited what economists call “downward stickiness” — resistance to any declines, while rising at the slightest demand-supply imbalance. That conventional wisdom may have been turned on its head by demonetisation. The tendency now is for prices to be increasingly “sticky upward”. The accompanying table (right)...

-The Hindu Business Line It was a gratuitous and direct assault on the informal sector by the state The retrospective defence being provided by the Government for its act of suddenly demonetising 86 per cent of the country’s currency is as mindless as the act itself. The main argument for demonetisation that was advanced a year ago was that ‘black money’-holders would not dare to bring their demonetised currency to the banks;...

-The Indian Express Demonetisation was part of a political imagination that is closer to a technocratic authoritarianism. Revolutions are often paradoxical things. In the minds of the revolutionary, they conjure up images of radical change. But reality is more recalcitrant. It makes a fool of the revolutionary, exacerbating those very things that the revolution seeks to change. Demonetisation has turned out to be no different. It was a populist measure, done in...

-The Indian Express It can also mean other things such as currency shortage, transaction mode shift. The government has presented a lower cash-to-GDP ratio as a key achievement of demonetisation, and a measure of black money being checked. Economists, however, caution against reading this metric in isolation. Prime Minister Narendra Modi said last month that the cash-to-GDP ratio is down to 9% after demonetisation, from over 12% earlier. “Was it possible if a...

-Firstpost.com Development economist Jean Dreze has been vociferous critic of the Narendra Modi government's demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes a year back. He had famously warned that "demonetisation in a booming economy is like shooting at the tyres of a racing car". A year on, it seems his caution has come true. In the first quarter of the current financial year, the GDP growth slowed to a three-year...