-The Indian Express Several questions have been raised about our estimates of the savings from the DBT scheme for cooking gas. But all parties accept that the programme reduced subsidised sales by 24 per cent. Direct cash transfers have the potential to improve the economic lives of the poor by transferring benefits to households quickly and directly. Achieving these benefits requires thoughtful design of schemes, and careful, rigorous analysis of ongoing...

-The Indian Express The percentage of the adult population for four large developing countries — China, India, Indonesia and Nigeria — who are living in cities, as well as the change in this percentage between 1975 and 2000, are plotted in chart. Rural-urban migration is exceptionally low in India. Changes in the rural and urban population between decennial censuses over the period 1961-2001 indicate that the migration rate for working age...

-The Hindu The Centre is without doubt justified in saying it will contest the ruling in the World Trade Organisation against India’s policy of local sourcing of components as part of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission. The U.S. had taken to the WTO its case against India’s policy of favouring domestic inputs in solar cells and solar modules, arguing that it amounted to a discriminatory trade practice and distorted the...

-Outlook In the last two decades, more than 300,000 farmers have ended their lives. What can be done? Indian agriculture is important as it feeds an estimated 1.3 billion population of the country and is also burdened with the responsibility of providing livelihoods to 60 per cent of the people — 780 million people. No foreign country can produce this mammoth quantity of food and supply to India nor any sector...

-TheWire.in The current policies and systems of implementation result in heavy losses and are a huge disservice to farmers and consumers. Former prime minister Manmohan Singh once remarked in an interview that “we are a democracy but we are also an indisciplined democracy.” I think he was referring to our bad habit of not putting our house in order till things don’t get completely out of hand. This propensity is shown by our...