-PTI BUNDI: Cash-starved farmers in Bundi villages - where ATM and bank branches are hard to find - have resorted to the ancient barter system, exchanging wheat and pulses with other commodities. For farmers in the villages it is literally a return to the old days. Wheat is currently being sold for Rs. 21 to 24 per kg but the locals in villages are forced to purchase commodities weighing equal to wheat thus...

-Scroll.in India’s first chief statistician, Pronab Sen, is now country director of the International Growth Centre, which seeks to build effective growth facilities through engagement between policymakers and researchers. In this interview to Scroll.in, he speaks on the 50 days of demonetisation, its failings, its severe impact on the poor, the loss of credibility of the Reserve Bank of India, the push to make India a cashless or less-cash economy, and...

-The Indian Express For the poor, with little cash in the first PLAce, digital promises to ‘swipe’ them out, before their marginalisation is even addressed. Demonetisation is, by its very nature, an autocratic, coercive step. The demonetisation of November 2016 has affected every single Indian. We are, as usual, persuaded to bear the pain and suffering, to “sacrifice” for the nation. The rhetoric continues but it now seems clear that the objective...

-Business Today If you want to really get smart with water, the first thing you should realise is that in most parts of India, water is abundantly available. But you also need to recall what a man named Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi had once said: "There is enough in this world for everyone's need, but not for anyone's greed". Today, what Gandhiji advised is being termed a "paradigm shift" in water management. The...

-The Hindu Anger and frustration dominate discussions on demonetisation at a jan sunwai in Beawar, Rajasthan About five-six hundred people are crowded in and around a small shamiana-covered triangle, like the apex of the letter A. The two arms of the A are busy streets typical of small-town India, a press of pedestrians and two-wheelers punctuated with foraging cows, goats and impatient cars and tempos. Including the shopkeepers and hangers-on across the...