-National Herald Indian students going abroad for studies cost approximately $80 billion foreign exchange, which broadly equals forex received by way of NRI remittances annually. This is a staggering figure spent by about 11 lakh students who go abroad for higher studies. This figure is only growing year after year and unlike in the past, many students have started going abroad for studies even after their schooling. One of the reasons is...

-Livemint.com A new paper suggests the second covid-19 wave had a more fatal impact on Chennai’s poorer neighbourhoods than richer ones Poorer communities saw far more excess deaths during the pandemic than richer neighbourhoods, evidence from a new Chennai-based study shows. Taken with data from other parts of the country, the findings suggest that India’s poor, particularly the elderly, may have disproportionately borne the burden of the pandemic’s fatal impact. In a study...

-The Hindu Public choice refers to an economic approach towards the study of politics. American Nobel laureate James Buchanan, a prominent member of the Virginia school of political economy, characterised the public choice approach to politics as the study of “politics without romance.” Public choice theorists assume that politicians and Bureaucrats who run the government of a country are self-interested individuals who primarily look after their own selfish interests. This is in...

-Scroll.in The cast of characters readers will meet is staggering, and necessary, to understand the complex relationship between democracy and some the poorest people. Very few books on poverty in India are as nuanced as Indrajit Roy’s Politics of the poor: Negotiating Democracy in Contemporary India. From its very first page, Roy has his readers agog when he informs them that “the world is richer than it has been at any time...

-Scroll.in In a world of powerful spying tools, Indian democracy urgently needs checks on intelligence gathering. With allegations that opposition leaders, Union ministers, Bureaucrats, an election commissioner and even a Supreme Court judge could have been spied on, the Pegasus spyware scandal points to one of the most egregious misuses of power in India’s history. The Israeli manufacturer of Pegasus insists that it only sells its weapons-grade spyware to governments, prompting allegations that...