Any change in the Public Distribution System (PDS) needs to be undertaken with extreme caution since it is likely to affect the food security of 50 percent of India's population. This has been stated by National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) in a recent research brief. The note from NCAER is based on India Human Development Survey (2011-12) data. In the IHDS, nearly 42,000 households from 33 states and...
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Dream loot for powerful -Buddhadeb Ghosh & Anjan Roy
-DNA Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, popularly knowns as NREGA, is the most romantic and largest development project in human history. It is extremely popular and invited widespread hatred. It embodies remarkable scope for alienated people and effortless corruption for powerful people at the lower level. The amount spent on it over the last nine years is about Rs3.50 lakh crore. The average number of jobs generated per year...
More »Doubts over data: economists remain sceptical as government projects GDP at 7.4%
-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: India is poised to become the world's fastest-growing major economy, possibly overtaking a slowing China this year itself, according to data released by the statistics office on Monday. But the numbers, based on a new series, seem to have intensified the bewilderment among experts who see little evidence of such a sharp growth surge. "The numbers are quite puzzling," said Soumya Kanti Ghosh, chief economic advisor, State...
More »These rancid rankings -Shamnad Basheer
-The Indian Express "If we did not have a patent system, it would be irresponsible, on the basis of our present knowledge of its economic consequences, to recommend instituting one." So said Fritz Machlup, a wise American economist several decades ago. His words remain as true now as they were then. For, the patent system is one of the most faulty legal regimes that one could possibly have conceived. It purports...
More »Food security: economists challenge official panel’s conclusions -Yogesh Rajput
-Governance Now Shanta Kumar committee recommendation to curtail PDS based on "motivated data fudging" A group of economists have challenged the government move to scale down the ambit of the food security initiative, arguing that leakages in the public distribution system (PDS) are not as bad as an official committee has concluded. A ‘high-level committee on restructuring of FCI', headed by Shanta Kumar, submitted its report to prime minister Narendra Modi last month,...
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