-TheWire.in With respect to agriculture, a lot of data is either not available or is released with delay. Often, it is inconsistent with other data sets. At the recent Vibrant Gujarat summit, Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani said, “In this new world, data is the new oil. And data is the new wealth. India’s data must be controlled and owned by Indian people and not by corporates, especially global corporations.” The data of...

-PTI Southern states continue to lead the pack on the crucial measure, where the country is ranked 130th globally, but are staring at a different trouble, the report notes. Mumbai: Uttar Pradesh and Bihar continue to languish on the human development index (HDI) front, while others, including Haryana and Himachal, have shown an improvement in the past 27 years, says a report. The industrially progressive Gujarat and Maharashtra have slipped in the HDI...

-The Hindu Better education is not leading to better job opportunities, marriage prospects or freedom of movement Abigail Adams, wife of the second President of the U.S. and mother of the sixth President, wrote to her husband, “If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion.” As last year’s #MeToo movement and Sabarimala protests showed, perhaps Indian women are echoing her and are...

-The Indian Express Policy still hasn’t adjusted itself to address the crisis of agricultural produce deflation. India’s agricultural output grew by hardly 2.7 per cent during the last October-December quarter. That isn’t bad, if one takes the corresponding year-on-year increases for the preceding 10 quarters; these have ranged between 4.2 per cent and 7.5 per cent. The cause for concern is that these reasonably good production growth rates in “real” terms...

-The Hindu A basic income scheme will deliver benefits to the poor only if it comes on top of public services The idea of a universal basic income (UBI) is gaining ground globally. It has supporters among the political left and right, and among proponents as well as opponents of the free-market economy. A UBI requires the government to pay every citizen a fixed amount of money on a regular basis and...