Policy reforms required to bring about better convergence of schemes Streamlining of environment clearance for infrastructure projects suggested Higher farm sector share in economic development needed The Economic Survey 2010-11 has advised the government to carry out nearly a dozen reforms pertaining to various sectors of the economy and stressed that action in this regard would be necessary to achieve the 9 per cent GDP (gross domestic product) expansion projected for 2011-12 and...

With India growing faster than almost every other large economy, the government is right to address its long-run challenges. The push for investment in infrastructure is bearing fruit and the expansion of social programmes such as the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) and the Right to Education Act (RTE) is spreading the benefits of growth across the population. But just as improved infrastructure doesn’t eliminate all traffic jams, rapid growth...

Among the many reasons cited for India to proceed ahead with the Unique Identification (UID) project -that it will facilitate delivery of basic services, that it will plug leakages in public expenditure and that it will speed up achievement of targets in social sector schemes -   the most specious is perhaps the claim that it will help India reach her public health Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Despite impressive economic growth in...

Opening the reply to the President's Motion of Thanks on behalf of the Left parties in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday, Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Sitaram Yechury, demanded the stopping of the “loot” of public money in the form of concessions to corporates and high-end taxpayers. This relief, worth several lakhs of rupees, should be used to narrow the rich-poor divide, he added. Calling upon the government to shift policy...

Faced with soaring food prices for the second time in three years, senior United Nations experts today called for greater investment in agriculture from both the public and private sectors to increase smallholder productivity.   “Policy-related solutions are also required to increase the longer-term resilience of global agriculture to allow greater levels of supply to markets as demand grows,” UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Senior Economist Jamie Morrison told a meeting...