-Livemint.com Economist Esther Duflo on demonetisation impact, role of randomized control trials in policymaking, low priority assigned to health and education in India New Delhi: India’s demonetisation of high-value currency notes is a dramatic example of a policy announcement made without any serious thought given to implementation, said Esther Duflo, one of the leading development economists of the world and a professor at the department of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of...

-TheWire.in In November, after a very cogent public speech on India’s rivers, he was completely exhausted and in pain. But that he came anyway showed his dedication. “I need to go and pay respect to the people fighting for India’s rivers” insisted the weak Gandhian, barely able to walk, on November 28. In his speech at the India Rivers Week’s inaugural ceremony on that day, Anupam Mishra, with his characteristically wry humour,...

-TheThirdPole.net Anupam Mishra, who spent three decades fighting for rejuvenation of India’s traditional water harvesting systems, died on December 19 If many of India’s ponds, wells, stepwells, springs, check dams and other traditional water harvesting systems are still in working order today, if at least a few of India’s rivers have been revived, much of the credit must go to Anupam Mishra. Through reportage, analysis and advocacy sustained over three decades, this...

-The Hindu The unorganised manufacturing sector should be reoriented towards non-household units to provide efficiency gains. Ever since E.F. Schumacher, a British economist, published in 1973 his Book Small is Beautiful, implying that small units are better in terms of performance indicators and labour absorption, several studies have endorsed the same idea and argued in favour of promoting small units. Stretching the argument a little further, it may be emphasised that small...

-PTI ‘This exciting project will make South Asia’s rich and vibrant printed heritage accessible to everyone’ A new British Library project will digitise 4,000 early printed Bengali Books, amounting to more than 800,000 pages, as part of the U.K. India Year of Culture plans for 2017. The digitisation project is part of a wider “Two Centuries of Indian Print” project, an international partnership led by the British Library with funding from the Newton...