-The Hindu Groundwater meets three quarters of the State's farming needs The Punjab State Farmers Commission recently published a draft new agriculture policy for the State that envisages substantial crop diversification from paddy and wheat staples that the State has been growing since the sixties. The draft policy, currently being debated in agriculture circles, is the first serious road map to steer Punjab's agriculture towards a new dynamic, necessitated by a sharp...

-The Times of India The ongoing 'Bhagwati versus Sen' debate has generated more heat than light, necessitating correction. As an equal co-author of India's Tryst with Destiny, which defines the Bhagwati position, my stake in the debate is second to none. Two extreme characterisations of the positions of the two sides have emerged. The first has it that the differences between them are minimal with each side expressing the same ideas in...

-The Indian Express What caused the steep fall in poverty reported by the Planning Commission? The evidence is mixed Earlier this week, the Planning Commission released estimates of the incidence of poverty in 2011-12. As in virtually the entire literature on the measurement of poverty in India, these estimates are based on data on per capita consumption expenditure collected by the National Sample Survey Organisation. The estimates show that there has been...

-The Business Standard 7 things you should know in the Bhagwati vs Sen slugfest Jagdish Bhagwati and Amartya Sen are the two Indian economists who are most respected for their work. Both have worked on a broad spectrum of issues, though Sen is best known for his work on public choice and development and Bhagwati for his work on trade. They are both liberal, neoclassical economists, who support deregulation and disapprove of...

-The Times of India There's a new trend of chief ministers, particularly those with national ambitions, aggressively peddling their respective 'development models'. Interestingly, CMs from the same party at times indulge in one-upmanship. The question is: How are people in their states actually faring? How does one know whether one 'model' is better than another? One way is to look at how much a person spends on an average every month;...