-The Hindu Although urban Indians are slowly showing more openness in their attitudes towards women's attire, this is not the case when it comes to the issue of son preference As one of the world's most socially heterogeneous societies, building solidarity across social groups has been a singular challenge in India. Social bias in India is pervasive across a range of key cleavages - whether caste or class, region or religion. In this...

-The Indian Express The Situation Assessment Survey (SAS) of agricultural households, released last week by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO), is the second one ever to be done. The SAS of 2003 was necessitated by the agrarian crisis of the time. Farmer suicides had reached a peak, and the reference year for the survey, 2002-2003, had seen severe drought. The agricultural sector was in crisis, with growth rates slowing to...

-The Indian Express Hardly 58 per cent of rural households in India are engaged in farming activity, which, in turn, contributes not even 60 per cent to their average total monthly incomes. These are the findings of the latest countrywide "Situation Assessment Survey of Agricultural Households" conducted by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) for the 2012-13 crop year from July to June. They refute a common perception regarding agriculture - how it...

-The Hindu Providing people with a modest basic income instead of subsidies would save public revenue With oil prices falling, it was perhaps a good time to fade out fuel subsidies. All subsidies are inefficient and distortionary, and most are regressive. The same could be said of costly public works schemes as well. By contrast, the debate on direct benefit transfers has moved into a more sensible phase, with the posturing criticism of...

-Economic and Political Weekly   The runaway growth in states of subsidised solar pumps, which provide quality energy at near-zero marginal cost, can pose a bigger threat of groundwater over-exploitation than free power has done so far. The best way to meet this threat is by paying farmers to "grow" solar power as a remunerative cash crop. Doing so can reduce pressure on aquifers, cut the subsidy burden on electricity companies, reduce...