A recent one-liner about the achievement of the present Central government goes like this: bovine has become ‘divine’ during the NDA’s rule. But why do such jokes originate? Media reports suggest that unprecedented aggression has taken place during the recent months in the name of the peaceful looking animal – cow. Mob lynching and killings by fringe groups have been reported from various parts of the country, especially targeting Muslims and...

-The Times of India About a quarter of India's labour force, some 11 crore people, work in non-farm enterprises that can broadly be described as the unorganised sector. Of these 6.3 crore enterprises, none are covered under the Companies Act or Factories Act. In fact, more than two thirds are unregistered. These are not some fly by night vendors — 82% operate from homes or permanent structures outside homes, 98% are open...

-The Hindu Business Line Recent macro data hint at delayed second-order impacts from note ban Did the Indian economy suffer only temporary hiccups from the abrupt withdrawal of high-value currency notes in November 2016? Until recently, the Government and quite a few commentators were convinced that it did. Macro-economic data releases such as the first advance GDP estimates (which retained real gross value added, or GVA, growth at 7 per cent for...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: India is no longer the fastest-growing major economy in the world: it has lost its bragging rights to China. The Central Statistics Office (CSO) today put out its provisional estimates on national income that showed real GDP growth had tumbled to 6.1 per cent in the fourth quarter (January-March). That is considerably slower than the 6.9 per cent growth that the resurgent Chinese economy racked up during the same...

Much to our surprise, a careful relook at the newly released estimates on farm production from the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare would reveal that the foodgrain production during the rabi season is likely to fall by almost 1 million tonne between 2013-14 and 2016-17. Please see chart-1. Amidst the celebration of a bumper harvest in the ongoing crop year, it needs to be explained why the rabi foodgrain output...