Bihar Government's programme of distributing bicycles to school girls may be a modest intervention but is leading to big changes. A new research-based paper, brought out in August 2013, corroborates the success of the programme and testifies that it is leading to improved school enrollment of girls and arresting their dropout rates (See links below to read full paper and earlier studies on the subject).   Based on econometric and statistical models,...

-The Hindu As cities expand and markets keep fuel prices high, Indians are demanding better public transport. The States must deliver, but they are only inching ahead. In the chorus of angry voices against the horrific gang rape of a paramedic student on a moving bus in the national capital on December 16 last, one issue that quickly became apparent was the state of public transport in urban areas. The shocking incident...

-Frontline Once more, without feeling: the government's latest poverty estimates. YET again the Central government has mired itself in controversy by releasing its latest poverty estimates based on the consumption expenditure survey of the NSSO (National Sample Survey Office) Survey of 2011-12. The Planning Commission's poverty line, using methodology suggested by the Tendulkar Committee in 2010, is now apparently defined as the spending of Rs. 27.20 per capita per day in rural...

-The Hindustan Times A couple of months ago, I was in South Block for a meeting at the ministry of defence. Security norms dictate leaving mobile and electronic devices at the checkpoint. Imagine my horror when I came back an hour later to see one of the guards going through my iPad. This cavalier attitude towards individual privacy is illustrative of an interesting dilemma between the inevitability of a more intrusive...

-The Hindu Business Line   In much of the discussion on the turnaround after the Great Recession, attention has been focused on financial consolidation and the halting return to growth. Far less attention has been paid to the persistence of high and even rising unemployment and its sources. In the desperate search for evidence that the global recession has bottomed out and the recovery has arrived, the story told by the long-term trend...