-TheWire.in People have lost their jobs, small businesses are closing down and the agricultural sector has been hit hard as a result of demonetisation. The RBI must increase the supply of cash to curb further fallout. Money is not cash. In fact, cash in circulation was just 14% of all money in 2015-16 according to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). MEAsures of money also count close substitutes of cash including the...

-The Hindu Centre for Politics and Public Policy As one of the world’s largest rural connectivity endeavours, the National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) project has been the subject of immense policy interest for the potential it holds to deliver high speed broadband internet to rural India. The building of infrastructure on a scale of this kind was acknowledged as an audacious move owing to the nature of transformation that this could...

-Hindustan Times Water management should be at the heart of all smart city planning. While there is a lot of emphasis on transportation and infrastructure development, water management remains limited to treatment of waste water, quality monitoring, and smart metering in the government’s smart cities strategy. No clear plans have emerged on how smart cities are to be linked with their water catchments to ensure sustainable provision of water. More clarity is...

-RuralIndiaOnline.org Farmers in Maharashtra’s Nashik district – where one in every four tomatoes in India comes from – are destroying standing crops on a scale never seen before, following persistent rock-bottom prices since the November 8 demonetisation On Christmas morning, barely 24 hours after Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation of the Rs. 3,600 crore Shivaji statue in Mumbai, Yashwant and Hirabai Bendkule were slashing and uprooting the tomato vines on...

-Livemint.com Banks have received Rs14.97 trillion ($220 billion) as of 30 December, the deadline for handing in the banned notes, said a person familiar with the matter New Delhi: Indians have deposited nearly all the currency bills outlawed at the end of the deadline last year, according to people with knowledge of the matter, dealing a blow to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s drive to unearth unaccounted wealth and fight corruption. Banks have received...