-Livemint.com To keep up with the pressure of making headline fiscal deficit numbers look good, the government has increasingly resorted to off-budget financing for revenue as well as capital spending As with every other Union budget in the country, all eyes will focus on the fiscal deficit number that India’s new finance minister, Nirmala Sitharaman presents on 5 July in her maiden budget speech. But for many investors and analysts, how that...

-Mongabay.com * According to scientists, 40 percent of insect species are likely to become extinct globally in the coming years. Indian entomologists agree that India is already witnessing a slump in insect numbers. * Pollination, biological control, food provisioning, recycling organic matter, producing honey, silk, lac, medicines and food are just some of the reasons why we need insects. * Scientists rue the lack of adequate information and documentation on insects in India....

-Business Standard This has reignited the debate on the accuracy of India's GDP numbers in particular, and has once again highlighted the inefficiencies in the estimation of national accounts in general In a research paper that analyses data on 17 different economic indicators in the real sector, former chief economic advisor of India Arvind Subramanian has said that India’s real gross domestic product (GDP) growth “was more likely to have been between...

-The Hindu BJP’s vote share lead over Congress among users fell in comparison to 2014 The role of social media as a key influencer of voting choices in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections may have been exaggerated, according to a Lokniti-CSDS survey. It found that the BJP’s vote share lead over the Congress among social media users was actually lower than in 2014. Survey data did establish a relationship between the social media...

-The Times of India India's gross domestic product growth rate has been overstated by about 2.5 percentage points per year post 2011, former chief economic adviser Arvind Subramanian has said in a research paper, prompting economists to doubt the size of the claimed overestimation, and the government to defend the data . Subramanian also called for revisiting the entire methodology and implementation for GDP estimation by an independent task force, comprising national...