-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: Private forecasters are counting on temperature changes in the Indian Ocean to strengthen the monsoon current like it did in 1997, when rainfall was normal, despite a strong El Nino. While forecasters are divided about the monsoon outlook, experts say that India has become less vulnerable to monsoon rain as the share of winter-sown crops has risen over the years, while only 40% of rural households...

-The Hindu The country is ranked third in the South Asian region. India figures in the top 50 countries in the world for an effective criminal justice system, according to a new study that ranks countries on how the rule of law is experienced by citizens. However, the study finds that it is among the worst performing countries when it comes to civil justice. The Rule of Law Index 2015, released by the U.S.-based...

-Livemint.com Increase in calorie consumption in rural and urban areas has surprised sceptics who doubted the sharpest fall in poverty seen in the last decade since the 1980s A long-standing puzzle in the Indian context has been the steady decline in calorie intake over the years despite economic progress. Many have argued that the decline in calorie consumption as seen from the surveys of National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) is evidence...

-Business Standard R Nagaraj, professor at the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (IGIDR), had disputed the Central Statistics Office (CSO) methodology on non-financial private corporate sector, which is a segment in the new GDP data. His criticism was mainly on the ground that CSO altered the methodology in 2015 from what was agreed on by a sub-committee, in which Nagaraj was a non-official member, in 2014. CSO gave a rejoinder...

-Economic and Political Weekly Ashish Bose coined the acronym BIMARU in the early 1980s to describe the backwardness of Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh relative to the best-performing states in terms of demographic Indicators. This article extends Bose's analysis to recent years to ascertain if the proposition is still valid. To retain the integrity of the original exercise, the same Indicators examined by Bose have been analysed, as far...