-Down to Earth Jean Dreze argues that we should not leave the making of an equitable society to experts alone What does one make of the shameful statistic that over 200 million Indians still subsist below the poverty line? How does one square it with the equally obscene distinction that we have the world’s fourth largest number of billionaires, thus making India the second most unequal nation after Russia? Indeed, how...

-PTI The economist said Gujarat almost always comes around the middle when it comes to any ranking of development indicators, whether it is social indicators, human development index, child development index or multi-dimensional poverty index. New Delhi: Development economist and Activist Jean Dreze on Sunday said there was "no evidence" that the so-called "Gujarat Model" was a model in any sense, pointing out to the state's backwardness in social indicators. "If you look...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Two finance ministry departments, the Election Commission and the Reserve Bank have no information on the consultations over electoral bonds the Centre introduced nine months ago and touted as a "game-changing" decision to clean up political funding, an RTI query has revealed. RTI Activist Venkatesh Nayak had sought from the department of economic affairs (DEA), a wing of the finance ministry, details of the number of representations it...

-The Indian Express The protesting farmers from various states across India are demanding implementation of Swaminathan Committee's recommendations, lower input costs, farm loan waiver and fair price for farm produce among other things. New Delhi: Swaraj Abhiyan leader Yogendra Yadav on Tuesday said that the “prevailing agrarian crisis in the country is not by accident but is policy and politics driven”. Speaking to indianexpress.com during a farmers’ protest in the national capital,...

-The Hindu Business Line Farmers have been borrowing from banks to repay lenders and reversing the cycle Ahmedabad: In the Saurashtra region of Gujarat, a saying goes: “A farmer is always indebted. He is born in debt and dies with a debt. What matters is how he manages this debt in his life.” There is a skew in Gujarat’s water resource distribution. Saurashtra covers 31 per cent of the State’s landmass but gets...