-The Indian Express Agriculture’s contribution to poverty reduction is five times more than that of metropolitan centres Speaking at the third BRICS Urbanisation Forum in Visakhapatnam on September 14, Deputy Chairman of the Niti Ayog, Arvind Panagariya, announced that “Without cities we can’t grow rapidly”. He added, “urbanisation plays an important role in poverty alleviation”. Both claims are exaggerated and somewhat misleading. A recent report prepared for the UN points out that, over...

-The Indian Express The Centre is pushing and many states are implementing Direct Benefit Transfers – and encountering little political opposition The entire focus on ushering in a direct benefit transfer (DBT) regime for delivering subsidies to the targeted populations has so far centered around cooking gas, and to some extent, on isolated pilot experiments with food subsidy. Agriculture subsidies, especially on inputs other than fertilisers, have largely escaped attention in...

-Business Standard The efficacy of farm debt waivers is ambiguous, but it has proved to be a potent potent weapon in the run-up to elections With elections round the corner in agrarian states of Uttar Pradesh and Punjab, Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi, his party’s Punjab chief ministerial candidate Amarinder Singh and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) chief Arvind Kejriwal are trying to woo farmers of the two states with promises of farm...

-The Indian Express India should learn from China and start with liberalisation of rural land, labour and capital markets before attempting bigger things. Independence Day has come and gone with its usual mix of celebrations, pride and ruminations on how things could be better. Interestingly, several media commentaries tagged the event with the 25th anniversary of economic reforms, launched in 1991 around the same time of the year. They largely dwelt on the theme...

-The Hindu Business Line The PMUY scheme, under which the poor get subsidised LPG connection, addresses an urgent need. At the same time, it can turn out to be a political masterstroke for the BJP, write Richa Mishra and Debabrata Das The kitchen has always played an important role in Indian politics. Leaders across political parties have cooked their electoral fortunes with the kitchen as the integral ingredient. While some distributed highly...