-The Hindu Professor Sen will receive £7,500 to commission a work of art and will give the annual Charleston-EFG Keynes Lecture at the Charleston Festival in the UK Economist and Nobel laureate Amartya Sen has won the newly instituted Charleston-EFG John Maynard Keynes Prize. "In the spirit of John Maynard Keynes' work, life and legacy, this new global prize recognises Professor Sen's outstanding contribution to society," a release accessed here said on Monday. Regarded...

-Economic and Political Weekly   The performance of National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in Rajasthan was debated for its stupendous performance in the initial years of the scheme, but also for the relative sharp decline after 2010. Based on a large representative primary survey, this paper argues that the decline in performance of this scheme in Rajasthan is not entirely due to the lack of demand. Instead, the supply-driven top-down nature of...

-The Indian Express The finance minister plans to scrap the supply of subsidised kerosene through the public distribution system (PDS) and high time, too. To begin with, why has the kerosene subsidy needed reform for decades and yet reform never materialised? Kerosene obtained through the PDS, being cheaper, is used to adulterate diesel and petrol. Kerosene leakages in the PDS are estimated to be 40 per cent of total allocations. The diversion...

-The Hindu It measured impact of reservation on productivity in Railways A first-of-its-kind study of the impact of reservations in public sector jobs on productivity and efficiency has shown that the affirmative action did not reduce productivity in any sector, but had, in fact, raised it in some areas. In the pioneering study, Ashwini Deshpande, Professor at the Delhi School of Economics, and Thomas Weisskopf, Professor of Economics at the University of Michigan,...

-The Hindustan Times Delhi has the dubious distinction of being the world's most polluted city. In fact, the entire country, including the rural areas, is heavily polluted as anyone who has taken a flight in India knows. The fog that engulfs north India in winter is largely a consequence of the smoke particles in the air on which water condenses easily. Why have matters been allowed to reach this state? One...