-Livemint.com Greater fiscal autonomy has not yet translated into higher spending on nutrition by states Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi once said, “There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.” Sadly, hunger and undernutrition continue to plague our country. India’s record in addressing undernutrition is abysmal. With a stunting rate of 38.4%, India accounts for about a third of the world’s stunted...

-The Hindu In contrast to its pronouncements, the government’s own data suggest the economy is in a deep hole Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his Independence Day address, spoke triumphantly about how demonetisation drove ?3 lakh crore of unaccounted money into the banking system. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is still counting old notes, and unaccounted money cases are ongoing. Thus, this number is at best a guesstimate, and cannot be...

-Scroll.in The ministry says it will respond to a draft model contract that has been sent to states for comments. The Ministry for Health and Family Welfare has said that it will respond to the Niti Aayog’s draft agreement proposing the terms for privatising district hospitals across the country. As Scroll.in reported, the government policy think tank sent a letter to states in June proposing a model by which private companies...

Apart from gross domestic product (GDP) and gross value added (GVA), another indicator which shows whether an economy is thriving or stagnating is the growth in bank credit. Credit is a critical input in the production of goods and services. It is generally the case that during prosperous times, economic actors, who are engaged in different sectors or in various industry, take up bank loans to invest. The provisional data...

-The Indian Express First, it was demonetisation and crop price crash; now it is the collapse of cooperative credit that is hurting farmers during peak kharif operations. For most Maharashtra farmers, drying up of institutional finance for kharif farming operations is what’s really hurting. Nashik (Maharashtra): Last kharif, the Nashik District Central Cooperative Bank (NDCCB) disbursed  Rs 1,608.55 crore of crop loans during April-June, exceeding its target of Rs 1,257.18 crore. This...