-BusinessToday.in There is, however, no silver bullet solution to agrarian distress. It needs long-term planning and multi-pronged strategy. Agrarian distress has come to the centre stage of national discourse primarily because of last year's multiple farmers' marches and the electoral outcomes in the three Hindi heartland states of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. This augurs well for a sector which provides 49% of total employment and supports nearly 70% of population but...
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Rhetoric no salve for farm distress -PP Sangal
-Financial Express Farmers in India (also in undivided India) have generally been poor, and it has not been only the phenomenon of post-reforms period in Independent India, as believed by some. Yes, now it is becoming worse day by day. Farmers’ distress over the past few years has taken a new dimension so much so that political parties, without exception, are now using it as an opportunity to win elections by...
More »Universal Basic Income can be funded by reducing subsidies to the rich -Pranab Bardhan
-The Indian Express I think packaging a significant UBIS with a simultaneous increase in the taxes on the rich will help macro-economic stability, apart from assuaging the poor who will face some of the price rise in commodities or services, when subsidies are withdrawn. After my last op-ed in this paper (The safety net of the future) several readers, intrigued by the idea of a Universal Basic Income Supplement (UBIS) proposed...
More »Income inequality in India: Top 10% upper caste households own 60% wealth -Shreehari Paliath
-Business Standard/ IndiaSpend Among OBCs and STs too, top 10% had cornered most wealth. Top 10% of both groups held around 52% of wealth in 2012 and top 10% of SCs' share increased three percentage points to 46.7% till 2012 Although India’s upper caste households earned nearly 47% more than the national average annual household income, the top 10% within these castes owned 60% of the wealth within the group in 2012,...
More »A solution in search of a problem: on 10% reservations -Sonalde Desai
-The Hindu Instead of addressing inequality, the 10% quota for economically weaker sections creates huge anxieties If the number of demands for implementing reforms is any guide, India’s reservation system is clearly in disarray. However, it is unlikely that the recently passed Constitution (124th Amendment) Bill, 2019, creating a 10% quota for the economically weaker sections (EWS), will serve as anything more than a band-aid. Given the deep inequalities prevalent in access to...
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