--The Indian Express PMGSY was rolled out in 2000 to provide access to all-weather roads in 1.78 lakh rural habitations across the country. New Delhi: A recent independent World Bank assessment of the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY) rural roads programme meant to establish ‘farm to market connectivity’ shows that the PMGSY roads, in fact, “triggered a shift from farm to non-farm employment” in the habitations studied between 2009 and...

-Odisha Economy Discussion Series-2, April 2019, Nabakrushna Choudhury Centre for Development Studies, Bhubaneswar Purpose – The recently launched KALIA scheme of the Government of Odisha is a massive direct benefit transfer (DBT) scheme aimed at improving the condition of around three million farm households along with that of landless cultivators, sharecroppers, agricultural labourers, and vulnerable households. However, evaluations of the impacts of the scheme are likely to face difficulties in the...

  During budget presentations, budget documents, which are provided, carry updated data and information related to various departments and ministries of the Central Government such as on revenues, expenditures, deficits etc. Recently economists like Dr. Rathin Roy and Prof. Jayati Ghosh have expressed concerns about the Ministry of Finance for not uploading updated and appropriate budgetary data and figures on the website www.indiabudget.gov.in following the 2019-20 Union Budget presentation by the...

-The Hindu Local firms will be at a disadvantage if big tech companies are given plum roles Since early last year, WhatsApp has busily piloted its payment system in India. WhatsApp Pay relies on the Indian government’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) system to facilitate inter-bank transactions. Regulatory approval that would allow its nation-wide introduction is stuck on one point: the Indian government has asked WhatsApp to localise all data processing related to...

-The Hindu Business Line India’s manufacturing needs higher investment in education and R&D to become self-reliant and technologically competent The share of manufacturing in India’s GDP has stagnated at 16 per cent since 1991, despite economic reforms. No country ever became a manufacturing force without (a) a design capability; and (b) an institutional system that incentivises and sustains innovations. India needs a system to develop human and technical capabilities at both the...