-The Financial Express   Even in the BJP's Chhattisgarh, the costs of running the PDS outweigh the benefits-Aadhaar is the obvious answer   The first nail in Aadhaar's coffin, it has to be said, was driven in by none other than Nandan Nilekani. The day the father of the UIDAI's Aadhaar decided not to be a technocrat anymore, and chose to become a Congressman, he gave Aadhaar a distinct political flavour. It was now...

-The Economic Times In January 2012, PM Manmohan Singh declared half of India's children were malnourished and that was a national shame. Yet since then, not a single comprehensive national survey was conducted to determine the acuteness of the problem or measure progress, if any, of steps initiated to address malnutrition. Worse, the issue figures in a token manner in the election discourse of political parties and candidates. The 2005-06 National...

-The Business Standard   The Indian economy certainly has problems. But compared to the rest of the world, we will take ours any day Over the past couple of years, and particularly the past few months, we have become convinced that economists, the intelligentsia, fund managers, foreign brokers, don't read global macroeconomic news. All of the above have castigated the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government for having ruined the economy, causing a massive growth...

-The Hindu   Ideological labels are likely to mislead by channelling the debate into issues of capitalism and socialism and detract from the real problem George Santayana said: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Having forgotten the license-permit-quota-raj that enveloped us from 1950 to 1980 and its ‘crony socialism,' many intellectuals, mediapersons and politicians have now discovered ‘crony capitalism.' The license raj consisted of stifling controls imposed on...

-FAO Rome: The FAO Food Price Index rose sharply in March, up 4.8 points, or 2.3 percent, to an average of 212.8, the highest level since May 2013. "The Index was influenced, as expected, by unfavourable weather conditions in the US and Brazil and geopolitical tensions in the Black Sea region," said Abdolreza Abbassian, FAO Senior Economist. These and other influences are reviewed in greater detail in the AMIS Market Monitor report, the...