-Business Standard/ India Spend 52% of India's agricultural households are indebted; with an average outstanding loan of Rs 47,000 India’s foodgrain production rose five times over six decades, according to 2016 government data, the latest available. But with the average Indian farm half as large as it used to be 50 years ago and yields among the lowest in developing economies, both the agriculture sector and farmers have been driven to the...

A recent one-liner about the achievement of the present Central government goes like this: bovine has become ‘divine’ during the NDA’s rule. But why do such jokes originate? Media reports suggest that unprecedented aggression has taken place during the recent months in the name of the peaceful looking animal – cow. Mob lynching and killings by fringe groups have been reported from various parts of the country, especially targeting Muslims and...

-The Times of India About a quarter of India's labour force, some 11 crore people, work in non-farm enterprises that can broadly be described as the unorganised sector. Of these 6.3 crore enterprises, none are covered under the Companies Act or Factories Act. In fact, more than two thirds are unregistered. These are not some fly by night vendors — 82% operate from homes or permanent structures outside homes, 98% are open...

Apart from gross domestic product (GDP) and gross value added (GVA), another indicator which shows whether an economy is thriving or stagnating is the growth in bank credit. Credit is a critical input in the production of goods and services. It is generally the case that during prosperous times, economic actors, who are engaged in different sectors or in various industry, take up bank loans to invest. The provisional data...

-The Hindu Business Line Recent macro data hint at delayed second-order impacts from note ban Did the Indian economy suffer only temporary hiccups from the abrupt withdrawal of high-value currency notes in November 2016? Until recently, the Government and quite a few commentators were convinced that it did. Macro-economic data releases such as the first advance GDP estimates (which retained real gross value added, or GVA, growth at 7 per cent for...