-The Hindu The pandemic has made it more difficult for us to think rationally The COVID-19 pandemic has caused the biggest disruption to lives since the Partition in 1947 for those in India. It has caused dramatic shifts in our personal and work lives. It has, of course, caused illness and taken away many of our loved ones. It has caused many people to lose a substantial portion of their Incomes. It...
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The neoliberal reforms of 1991 didn’t work as claimed -Jayati Ghosh
-Macroscan.com/ Livemint.com There is a common trope, fed especially to generations born after 1991, that economic progress and modernization in India really occurred only after ‘liberalizing’ economic reforms were introduced three decades ago. This is a travesty of the truth. Certainly, conditions for most Indians have improved since that watershed year. Per capita income went up more rapidly than before, life expectancy went up, infant and maternal mortality decreased, income poverty...
More »Seeds of trouble -Jaideep Hardikar
-The Telegraph This year, a combination of factors is hurting the agriculture sector immensely A quiet, reverse transformation is happening in the countryside, and it is disconcerting. This sowing season, growing numbers of farmers are falling back on their bullocks as fuel prices are piercing the roof. The tractor, the symbol of modern farming, is becoming a luxury in the literal sense. The conventional ploughing equipment tied to bullocks costs only a...
More »Calculating the benefits of lockdowns -Dipankar Dasgupta
-The Hindu Lockdowns need to be guided by trade-offs between harsh and mild policies Data show that as of now 26.2% of the world population has received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. Of them, only 1% live in low-income countries. By contrast, the richer nations, such as the U.S., Canada, Germany and Britain, registered above 50% vaccination by July 17. For India, the percentage of the adult population that...
More »Last resort: Indians in distress are selling gold & third wave could only make it worse -Swansy Afonso
-ThePrint.in The likelihood of financial distress caused by the 2nd wave is much higher & it could lead to more outright sales of gold, unlike in 2020, when people chose to take out loans against gold. Mumbai: Paul Fernandes, a 50-year-old waiter in India, last year took out a loan using his gold as collateral to pay for his children’s education after losing his job on a cruise liner. This year, he...
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