Demonetisation hit informal sector hard and caused job losses which was not addressed by the budget, Moily said.
'The UPA's claim of growth at 9.5 percent was absolute nonsense and a fraudulent claim because the country did not grow; it was only statistical growth.' 'I do believe that when there is a determined leader who wants to bring a desired change, the system will begin acting. Today, people think there is policy paralysis, but there is functional paralysis also.' 'When things start moving, people will invest. Many companies are holding cash, many people are not investing. Nobody is making any move. Everybody is waiting for the elections to get over.' Economist and Swadeshi Jagran Manch convenor Swaminathan Gurumurthy in conversation with Shobha Warrier/Rediff.com
'The execution has been 100 per cent faulty.' 'The scheme is also a stupid one, a real Tuglaq Darbar scheme.' 'This way of attacking black money is the most ineffective one.'
'When George Bush Senior decided in 1992 that India and the United States must start talking in this-now-changed world, who would have thought that 10, 15 years down the road, we will start looking at each other as strategic partners?'
A chemical engineer, Anirudh gave up his high-paying job to work for welfare of farmers in Tamil Nadu.
Indian scientists who wrote to the PM last week are not entirely rejecting GMOs but instead asking for caution and further testing to establish their safety.
Hailed as one of the finest filmmakers of his time, K Balachander, who passed into the ages on December 23, has left behind a rich legacy of hard-hitting films, some of which have been routinely credited with redefining Tamil cinema.
The work of Norman Borlaug, who helped save billions from starvation, is worth recalling, especially as opposition to gene-modified crops mount, says Shreekant Sambrani.
The BJP government is no better than the Congress -- as wretched and anti-people. In addition, it is explicitly and aggressively communal, says Venkatesh B Athreya, in a hard-hitting interview to Shobha Warrier/Rediff.com.
'Suicide rates among Indian farmers were a chilling 47 per cent higher than they were for the rest of the population in 2011. In some of the states worst hit by the agrarian crisis, they were well over 100 per cent higher. In Maharashtra, farmers were killing themselves at a rate that was 162 per cent higher than that for any other Indians excluding farmers. A farmer in this state is two-and-a-half times more likely to commit suicide than anyone else in the country, other than farmers,' says P Sainath.
'If the money we spend on importing pulses reach our farmers, there won't be any suicides'
Shuvajit was confident of making a huge difference in the lives of people in rural India.
'If Modi arrived like a juggernaut, he left like a jigsaw puzzle whose pieces were being dismantled bit by bit. It was as if India had seceded quietly from him.' Shiv Viswanathan's social science fiction about what India would be like in 2020.
'This is not a small change, it's a BIG change. People wanted to hear the voice of their PM. They can do so now. This is a big parivartan.'
'The difference between black money in India and the black money out of India is, in India, it is tax evaded money and Indian money outside India is not only tax evaded money, but money which has been taken out of India's capital resources needed for India. So it is not only tax evasion, but treason too.'
'A change of government will bring about a lot of changes because everything is frozen for the last two years. So, the frozen energies of India will be released.' Swadeshi Jagran Manch convenor Swaminathan Gurumurthy discusses the Modi phenomenon with Shobha Warrier/Rediff.com
Ayurvedic expert Dr G G Gangadharan on how the ancient Indian medical practice needs to be propagated in the country of its origin