Making a case for promoting highly productive and well paid jobs, Niti Aayog has said that not unemployment but a “severe under-employment” is the main problem facing the country. The government think-tank in its three-year action plan, released last week, has said that a focus on the domestic market through an import-substitution strategy would give rise to a group of relatively small firms behind a high wall of protection. Contrary […]

After kicking up a storm by contending that farm income beyond a certain threshold should be taxed, NITI Aayog Member Bibek Debroy has now said that all production subsidies should be scrapped. Debroy said that even on the consumption side, subsidies should only be given to ‘unambiguously targeted individual prospects’. “My personal view is that on the production side, there should be no subsidies whatsoever. We (should) improve the business […]

Amid the big push being given to digital transactions post-demonetisation, NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant today said cards, ATMs and Point-of-Sale (POS) machines would become redundant in the country by 2020. “….India is in the midst of huge huge disruption in the world of both financial technology and in terms of social innovation (there is) huge huge innovation and this disruption will enable India to leapfrog…,” he said. “…and by […]