-Hindustan Times New Delhi: In chasing higher and higher GDP growth rates, India tends to gloss over two vital facts. One, farm growth cuts poverty twice as fast as industrial growth. Two, a 1% rise in agricultural output raises industrial production by 0.5% and national income by 0.7%, according to one calculation. In other words, the country’s fortunes are structurally tied to its farmers. Two-thirds of Indians rely on a farm-based income....

-The Times of India MUMBAI: India's middle class has seen new entrants. Pani puri vendors, dosa sellers, carpenters, welders, launderers, drivers and cable TV technicians have all pulled themselves out of the clutches of poverty and leapt into a section of the middle class — the bedrock of the economy. A paper titled 'The Rise of the New Middle Class and the Role of Offshoring of Services', co-authored by the head of...

-Frontline The inability to resolve pressing problems with respect to the production, distribution and availability of food is one of the important failures of the entire economic reform process. IN the fateful month of July 1991, when the devaluation of the Indian rupee presaged the introduction of a whole series of liberalising economic reforms, agriculture was very far from the minds of most policymakers and commentators. The immediate focus was on...

-Hindustan Times Babus will need to be careful what they say, or draw, on social media. The Centre on Tuesday proposed changes to the rulebook to explicitly treat criticism of government policies on social media as a violation of conduct rules. And the threat of disciplinary action for criticising the government is not limited to the written word. It includes caricatures that are uncharitable to the government too. On the other hand, the new...

-Business Standard This policy involves providing products and services such as electricity and fertilisers at below-market prices New Delhi: While much of public discourse in India has tended to focus on expanding the current subsidy regime to help the poor, Vijay Joshi, economist at Oxford University, advocates shifting to a universal basic income, replacing all government subsidies with a single cash transfer to all citizens, providing them with a basic income guarantee. At...