-The Telegraph C. Rangarajan today defended his calculation that three out of 10 in India are poor, saying the poverty numbers provided by him were not conservative estimates and the methodology was on a par with global standards. The expert group headed by Rangarajan dismissed the Suresh Tendulkar committee's methodology and estimated that the number of poor in India was much higher in 2011-12 at 29.5 per cent of the population. The BJP-led...

Two political leaders from rival camps, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and former Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh, have brought the spotlight on rural sanitation and have rooted for defecation-free India by investing in toilet construction on war footing. But a recent study by a group of eminent development economists led by Prof. Dean Spears-a visiting economist at the Delhi School of Economics - has concluded that when it comes to...

-The Indian Express Modi government's potato policy will prove counter-productive. Onions and potatoes take centre-stage again. Having secured a mandate based on people's unhappiness with continuously high and painful food inflation, the government's inability to control prices is, understandably, sending shivers down the BJP's spine. Fulfilling the aspirations of urban voters and winning over a thoroughly exacting Delhi electorate, where re-elections are due, are essential to the BJP's game plan to succeed....

-International Business Times   Consider this: There are 400 million Indians with no access to workplace benefits, such as social security, health insurance or unemployment insurance, a number higher than the population of the United States and Canada combined, according to a Delhi-based group of economic researchers. So, as the United States grapples with growing income inequality, it takes a country like India to put some of those economic and working realities into...

-The Citizen.in This piece is a rejoinder to an article by D K Joshi, which appeared in ‘The Indian Express' on June 4, 2014. The main arguments made by the author are neither new nor unique. Many neoliberal economists, including some occupying crucial policy-making positions have been making arguments which propose dilution of Minimum Support Price (MSP) policies to take care of excess food stocks with the government and also control...