-The Guardian Third world or global south? Pro-poor or pro-wealth? The term ‘development' is a minefield that eclipses the real issues The idea of "development" can still conjure up romantic visions among some about helping to improve the lives of people in the "third world" through sheer goodwill. Yet we hold on to the term and defend it. We also hold on to the UK's Department for International Development or the millennium...

-LSE Asia Research Centre Background: Farmers' suicides have become an important socio-economic concern in India that has profound implication on the quality of life of farmers and their families. There are not many epidemiological studies on this. We propose to estimate suicide rates for farmers and non-farmers across the states of India and over time. We will also contextualise our results to the discourse on agricultural technology and development in general...

-Al Jazeera The UN claims that its Millennium Development Campaign has reduced poverty globally, an assertion that is far from true. The received wisdom comes to us from all directions: Poverty rates are declining and extreme poverty will soon be eradicated. The World Bank, the governments of wealthy countries, and - most importantly - the United Nations Millennium Campaign all agree on this narrative. Relax, they tell us. The world is getting...

-The Hindu Business Line While the limitations of the concept of economic growth are acknowledged, we need a better index than HDI Despite claims that economic development as a branch of economic science emerged only in the 1950s, there is no doubt that the notion of development existed even in classical economic thought processes, emerging from the writings of Adam Smith and David Ricardo. The recognition of development economics as a discipline...

-The Hindustan Times The entire framework for monitoring environmental compliance is being dismantled systematically. This is a process that actually began with the UPA government, which replaced the feisty environment minister Jairam Ramesh with the more pliant Jayanthi Natarajan. With industry lobbies still crying wolf, she too made way for Veerappa Moily, the petroleum and natural gas minister, without the UPA seeing anything contradictory in someone holding both those responsibilities. In just a month,...