-The Financial Express The BJP's resounding Lok Sabha victory after years of policy paralysis raised a widely-shared hope that the government, led by PM Narendra Modi, will put India back on track by resuming inclusive growth. And that agriculture and rural development would be at the centre of the agenda. Half the employment still comes from agriculture, though it contributes just 14% to the GDP. India contains the largest number of...

-Hindustan Times Sharmilla Dar, a government schoolteacher in east Delhi, is irritated about a sudden surge in vegetable prices in the last week after they had cooled considerably since a year ago. "Why can't the government keep things affordable?" she asks. For middle-class consumers, food inflation worries are creeping back in. The farm sector is hurting badly after a full year of unprecedented weather havocs - from a partial drought last summer...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: More than two-thirds of the sewage generated in 118 towns, located in the Ganga river basin, get discharged into the country's national river untreated, making the task of its rejuvenation a long drawn process. Recent findings of a report, prepared by a team of experts from different government agencies, have noted that these towns collectively generate over 3,636 million litres per day (MLD) of sewage as...

-The Indian Express By officially committing to inflation targeting through the signing of a monetary policy agreement between the finance ministry and the RBI, India has joined 28 other countries in explicitly fixing goals for annual increases in the consumer price index (CPI) and pinning responsibility on the central bank for achieving them. Interestingly, among the now 29 countries, India has the lowest per capita income. While there are as many as...

-The Hindu The Budget overlooks the fact that human capabilities are as important as physical capital for economic growth and the quality of life. It goes back to the days when growth and development sounded synonymous, physical capital was thought to be the key, and human capital took a back seat Once upon a time, around the end of the Second World War, there was a naive view in development economics that...