-IANS The former prime minister said both demonetisation and GST have impacted the informal sector, which accounts for 90% of employment. New Delhi: Both demonetisation and GST have affected India’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth adversely, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on Monday. “Both demonetisation and GST have had some impact on GDP,” Manmohan Singh, who has earlier said the Indian economy has been running on only “one engine” of public spending,...

-The Indian Express On the latest justifications being given by the RBI, Franco asked “what was that economics he (Governor Patel) learnt to roll out a financial policy like Demonetisation troubling the entire population?” Chennai: Blaming the Reserve Bank of India Governor Urjit Patel for “misusing” the central bank to carry out demonetisation which “caused trouble to the common man”, D Thomas Franco, general secretary of All India Bank Officers Confederation has...

-Scroll.in Inability of local officials and infrastructure to cope with the complex technologies driving the scheme could be leaving lakhs of workers unpaid. This year’s Economic Survey lists several “improvements” in the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act brought about since 2014-’15. Mostly, these “improvements” are technological initiatives – greater convergence with other programmes, “geo-tagging” of MNREGA assets. They have not made a difference on two of the stated purposes – timely...

-The Indian Express Thomas Piketty points to the widening income disparities that have accompanied economic growth in India, which endanger social stability The paper by Thomas Piketty and Lucas Chancel, ‘Indian Income Inequality 1922-2014 — From British Raj to Billionaire Raj?’, is now in the public domain. Piketty needs no introduction — his Capital in the Twenty-First Century has been one of the most influential books on economics in the past decade....

-Press release from NREGA Sangharsh Morcha For the past five days, hundreds of National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) workers and their supporters from across the country have gathered at Jantar Mantar to demand the implementation of the employment guarantee act in letter and spirit. They are demanding a substantial increase in the NREGA wages, timely payment of wages, implementation of local plans, expansion of existing entitlements and adequate budget for...