-Livemint.com The government’s inordinately large food stockpiles have resulted in an artificial market scarcity On 7 January, the ministry of statistics released India’s advance estimates of national income for 2019-20, pegging the economy’s growth rate this financial year at 5%. Based on data available for the first two quarters, this seems an overestimate. Most indicators suggest that actual growth may be lower than 5%. This is bad news, especially since there is...

  Against the backdrop of National Register of Indian Citizens (NRIC), which is expected to be conducted nationwide, there are media reports about detention centres being constructed in various parts of the country. Although media reports indicate the Government denying any connection between NRIC and National Population Register, a reply to unstarred question no 4380 (to be answered on 21st April 2015 in the Lok Sabha) by the Minister of State...

-Livemint.com Let’s not discredit the findings of statistical surveys that are conducted among real respondents The uncomfortable truth that emerged from the leaked report of the Consumer Expenditure Survey (CES) is that rural poverty increased substantially between 2011-12 and 2017-18 for the first time in five decades. That this happened during a period of claimed high growth should have led to more research on what went wrong. Instead, there have been attempts...

-Livemint.com * Leaked official data shows poverty is rising, but we won’t get a confirmation till at least 2023. That’s unfortunate * Neither has the government released the report of an expert panel, nor provided any evidence about the nature and extent of divergence with other administrative data On Friday, the ministry of statistics and programme implementation (Mospi) announced that the data and reports of the 75th round of the National Statistical Office...

-The Indian Express Urban areas require a different approach to end open defecation. The Swachh Bharat Mission is being executed by two different ministries — the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation for rural areas and the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs for urban areas. In the rural areas, the major challenge was to change the mindset of the populace so that they would start using household toilets rather than...