-The Hindu The paradox becomes clearer by recognising the circuit of financial flows beyond the real economy Divergences between the booming financial and the stagnant real sectors, which appear rather confounding as well as disconcerting, warrant an explanation. Enumerating the facts in India’s major secondary stock market, the Sensex (the benchmark index of the BSE Limited, or formerly the Bombay Stock Exchange Ltd.) has been found tracking an upward path, from 40,817 on...

-The Indian Express Evidence-driven approaches, including those tried out in Mexico and Brazil, can remove shortcomings in India’s nutrition schemes. The findings of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) have come as a reality check, and even experts are trying to make sense of it. The survey shows that food security and nutrition in India have worsened since the last NFHS round (2015-16). Among the 22 states and Union Territories (UTs) for...

-The Hindu The UN Secretary General’s recent advice to India amounts to asking for its virtual de-industrialisation and stagnation The UN Secretary General António Guterres’s call for India to give up coal immediately and reduce emissions by 45% by 2030 is a call to de-industrialise the country and abandon the population to a permanent low-development trap. Piling on the pressure In an extraordinary move in climate diplomacy, Mr. Guterres, delivering the Darbari Seth Memorial...

-The Hindu The longer-term decline in the labour participation rate can be attributed to a host of factors The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted economies across the world and presented policymakers with the unenviable task of sustaining employment amidst lockdowns. However, the academic and political debates in India on unemployment, which is widely attributed to jobless growth amidst stagnation in the agricultural and manufacturing sectors, predate the pandemic. It will be useful to...

Most reports and studies by official agencies, international think tanks and private entities indicate the cataclysmic impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the economy and society. They anticipate that lockdowns imposed by various countries across the globe to reduce the exponential diffusion of COVID-19 (i.e. for flattening the curve by social distancing and quarantines) would adversely affect economic growth and disrupt supply chains in most sectors, on top of causing...