-Livemint.com One of the big drivers of the ruling BJP’s massive victory in 2014 was its ability to exploit inequalities within caste groups to expand its support base New Delhi: When we think of caste-based inequality in India, we typically think of a pyramid where scheduled castes (SCs or Dalits) and scheduled tribes (STs) are at the bottom, other backward classes (OBCs) above them, and upper castes at the very top....

-PTI Consumption of honey, cheese rises: study Patna: Prohibition is making people of Bihar spend on good clothes and food with sale of expensive sarees rising by 1,751%, while consumption of honey by 380% and that of cheese by 200% in the first six months of the ban, according to latest studies on the measure. The studies, conducted by think tank Asian Development Research Institute (ADRI) and government-funded Development Management Institute (DMI), also...

-The Hindu Business Line The Ayushman Bharat programme must aim to reverse poverty caused by healthcare expenses The state of India’s healthcare system is somewhat dichotomous — the country is a global supplier of life-saving, affordable and good quality generic medicines, yet lakhs of families are driven into poverty because they are forced to spend much of their earnings and savings on medications to treat chronic and life-threatening diseases. The poor, particularly,...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Congress on Monday asserted that boastful claims and sermons on the economy after the completion of four years of the Narendra Modi government were of little value as the lives of ordinary people had worsened because of reckless decisions and administrative incompetence at a time when the global economy was looking up. Former finance minister P. Chidambaram said at a news conference: "The RBI's Consumer Confidence Survey...

-The Hindu Why measuring inequality is not the same as measuring changes in the level of poverty in India In recent years, there has been a lot of discussion on increasing inequality within several countries of the world, including India, particularly after the publication of Thomas Piketty’s book on inequality. It is true that rising inequality has adverse economic and social consequences. The Gini coefficient or other measures of inequality are being...