Sounding a note of caution, the Economic Survey has stressed that for “growth to be inclusive” India must create adequate employment opportunities—a call that underlines existing inequality, including urban-rural income disparity, and concern that it may increase as more young people enter the job market. While India’s unemployment rate has dropped from 8.2% in 2004-05 to 6.6% in 2009-10, the number of jobless is still huge in absolute terms. The...

Most of us don’t even get a single shot at making history — Manmohan Singh has a second chance The fiscal deficit is an outcome, not a policy. It is the net resolution of the policies pertaining to taxes and expenditure. It is worth analysing separately the two components of the deficit. The table reports the results of relating the tax and expenditure share of GDP to per capita income for...

A study on the effect of the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) on health expenditure in rural areas shows that between 2004-05 and 2009-10, the total monthly per capita medical expenditure in villages went up by 44 per cent against a corresponding increase of 65 per cent in urban areas. Over the same period, total Per Capita Expenditure went up by 66 per cent in villages and 70 per cent in...

National Sample Survey Organisation's report on the average calorie intake per person in Indian households points to a much higher incidence of poverty in the country than reflected in estimates of the proportion of the population below the official "poverty" line. Among the features that sully India’s “growth story” is the persistence and possible worsening of malnutrition in the country. The subsistence nutritional intake adopted when defining the official poverty line...

-The Hindu   ‘The argument that too many people are coming forward to claim benefits is flawed' Aadhaar, the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) project, cannot “fix” all that is wrong with the Public Distribution System, Abhijit Sen, member of the Planning Commission, said here on Saturday. The biometric identification and authentication project has been touted by the Planning Commission as a panacea for all issues that plague the Public Distribution System (PDS),...