-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) said on Thursday that the tax base and revenues had increased significantly post demonetisation and there was no surge in the people who stopped filing returns. “CBDT clarified that contrary to the report, it is a fact that demonetization had a phenomenal positive impact on the widening of tax base and direct tax collections,” the tax department said while...

-The Indian Express Both BJP’s PM Kisan and Congress’s Nyay acknowledge that small and marginal farmers and bottom 20 per cent of population have not benefited from current policies. But both schemes raise further questions. It is time to celebrate the biggest spectacle of democracy on this planet. About 900 million people are eligible to exercise their right to choose their representatives to the Lok Sabha. This festival of democracy will...

  Growth in rural wages not only indicates economic prosperity of the masses, it is also considered important so as to generate effective demand for goods and services, which is produced by various sectors of the economy. When money becomes available in the hands of rural workers due to government spending on programmes such as Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), it generates demand for commodities. The production of commodities...

-NetworkIdeas.org The SDGs were obviously incredibly ambitious – far more so than the Millennium Development Goals that they succeeded – and so it was indeed a remarkable achievement that governments of almost all countries signed up to them. There were no less than 17 very significant and substantive goals, each containing multiple targets, and each target relying often on more than one indicator. And these goals and targets are not simply...

-The Hindu There is a compelling case for spending Rs. 3.6 lakh crore on the poor, but it must be done carefully The idea of a minimum income guarantee (MIG) has caught up with political parties. A MIG requires the government to pay the targeted set of citizens a fixed amount of money on a regular basis. With the promise of the Nyuntam Aay Yojana (NYAY) by the Congress party, it is...