Just before Dhanteras and Diwali this year, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) released the November edition of its monthly bulletin. The latest RBI Monthly Bulletin says that the GDP has contracted by -8.6 percent in the second quarter of fiscal year 2020-21 (i.e. July-September, 2020) as compared to the gross domestic product (GDP) during the corresponding period last year. It may be noted that India’s GDP shrunk by -23.9...

-The Hindu With reforms promoting innovation and lowering the cost of doing business, India is poised to attract the best investments Vietnam and Bangladesh are on a roll. While Bangladesh has become the second largest apparel exporter after China, Vietnam’s exports have grown by about 240% in the past eight years. What has helped them? And what can India learn from them? Two nations and their success stories An open trade policy, a less...

Multidimensional poverty is about non-monetary poverty and is strongly associated with the challenges of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Although previously defined only in monetary terms, poverty is now understood to include the lived reality of people’s experiences and the multiple deprivations they face. India’s multidimensional headcount ratio (H) i.e. the proportion or incidence of people (within a given population) who experience multiple deprivations has reduced from 55.1 percent to...

-ThePrint.in Prior to 2014, Indian farmers mostly organised small protests at the state or local level. Modi govt’s inactions on its promises made farmers go national. In the 2014 Lok Sabha election campaign, Narendra Modi promised to increase farmers’ income. Yet after coming to power, his government did little towards this promise throughout its first tenure. Recently, however, the Modi government passed three “historic” bills purported to alleviate the woes of India’s...

-The Tribune With APMC markets heading towards a collapse, the new set of reforms is aimed at encouraging corporatisation, with big business moving into agriculture, storage and marketing. As the experience of US/Europe shows, when unregulated markets become dominant, small farmers are the first to be pushed out of agriculture. Reiterating what former US Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz (during Ronald Reagan’s rule) had declared: “Get big or get out,” Sonny Perdue, US...