-The Hindu Business Line   Perpetual growth is a piece of nonsense. The focus should be on protecting livelihoods through sustainable means Construct a building, demolish it, reconstruct, break it down again, and go on repeating this meaningless exercise. You will have economic growth, as currently measured. But no net gain in employment during the endless cycle of construction and demolition, no net increase in productive capacity, and no appreciable change in poverty...

-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 Tribune The community has to pay the cost of environmental degradation if sustainable agricultural practices are not followed. Food can also be produced by in-built provisions for ecological services. For this, sustainability issues have to be addressed with policy support. An ecosystem is a dynamic, complex, functional unit of diverse living organisms, physical environment and humans are its integral part. The wellbeing of mankind depends upon food, water, fibre, medicine, flood...

-The Indian Express Most of the dynamism of the Indian economy comes from its states. They must be given more room to chart their growth trajectories In the euphoria surrounding the election results, it is tempting to avoid facing up to the harsh realities of making development happen. Even for those who characterise the election as "the dawn after the dusk", in the new light of day, India's development challenges remain essentially...