-The Hindu Alleviating poverty in India requires not only cash transfers but also other enabling changes Advocates of unconditional cash transfers claim that they can be both emancipatory and transformative. They argue that people are quite capable of making rational decisions. And that this kind of basic income support can improve their lives. I have no quarrel with the claim that we must trust the poor. Such suspicion is part of an elite...

-The Hindu India's small farmers have been struggling for centuries now and they need social and governmental action to change their future Of India's 121 million agricultural holdings, 99 million are with small and marginal farmers, with a land share of just 44 per cent and a farmer population share of 87 per cent. With multiple cropping prevalent, such farmers account for 70 per cent of all vegetables and 52 per cent...

-The Asian Age The sharp and sudden collapse of international prices of crude oil brings significant short-term gains for the Indian economy. However, in the medium and long run, the fall in oil prices has ramifications that are far from positive for this country. The windfall gains that have accrued will provide temporary relief for finance minister Arun Jaitley and will enable him to meet the fiscal deficit target in the...

-Frontline The problem in rural India is not one of too much credit to poor households that leads to debt waivers that damage bank balance sheets, but one of inadequate access to credit from formal sources. IF Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan is to be believed, efforts to help Indian farmers by providing them with cheap(er) credit and relieving them of an unsustainable debt burden only harms them in the...

-Frontline SHUBHANKAR DAM, Assistant Professor of Law at Singapore Management University School of Law, is the author of Presidential Legislation in India: The Law and Practice of Ordinances (Cambridge University Press, 2014), which has received wide acclaim among scholars of constitutional law. Against the backdrop of his insightful critique on the necessity of ordinances in a democracy, Professor Dam discusses in this interview the recent controversy triggered by the Bharatiya Janata...