-Financial Express While recently releasing the book, Supporting Indian Farms the Smart Way by Ashok Gulati, Marco Ferroni and Yuan Zhou, Arun Jaitley remarked that India needs a good blend of investments and subsidies in its agriculture policy. He said that, luckily, there are no severe constraints on resources to invest in rural areas, be it roads, water (irrigation), sanitation, and even housing. If he could include in this list of...

-The Telegraph Our PM doesn’t seem sympathetic to the autonomy of academic institutions. He seems to promote the idea of delivery first, then funds: Andre Beteille New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday emphasised the autonomy his government had granted to higher-education institutions but several academics questioned the claim. Inaugurating a conference on education here, Modi termed the autonomy given to the IIMs “unprecedented”. Among the freedoms granted to the B-schools by the...

-Frontline.in A DETAILED report brought out recently by the Nobel laureate Amartya Sen’s Pratichi Institute, titled “Primary Education in West Bengal: The Scope for Change”, highlights certain major problems that are coming in the way of the proper functioning of the primary education system in the State. While acknowledging that access to primary education has increased significantly and that there has been a perceptible improvement in the pupil-teacher ratio (PTR), the...

-TheWire.in Mexican economist David Barkin on India's neoliberal economics, growing inequalities, agrarian distress and more. David Barkin is Professor of Economics at the Metropolitan Autonomous University in Mexico City. He received his doctorate in economics from Yale University and was awarded the National Prize in Political Economics in 1979 for his analysis of inflation in Mexico. His research has focused on the development of an alternative to the capitalist economic model. In an...

-TheWire.in From rotten vegetables to frogs, the MDM in Uttar Pradesh has featured several unlikely ingredients. In a village in Chitrakoot district, while insects were the latest buzz, a severe dose of apathy appears to be the real cause of alarm. Chitrakoot, Uttar Pradesh: The website of the Uttar Pradesh Mid-Day Meal Authority (MDMA) proudly boasts of having won a gold trophy in “e-governance” for its innovative use of technology in...