In the financial year 2017-18 when tractor sales touched new heights, it was said by many of the NDA (viz. National Democratic Alliance) government supporters that rural demand has revived on account of adequate monsoon rainfall and higher minimum support prices for crops. Many economists and newspaper columnists also denied the existence of any rural distress. An alternative perspective, however, was also presented by rural economists like Dr. Himanshu who teaches...

-Newsclick.in Measures announced by the finance minister are mere concessions to industry lobbies and stock market, and don’t address lack of demand. The raft of measures announced by India’s finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman for supposedly boosting a sinking economy are unlikely to rescue flagging economic growth and don’t even address the key problems of lack of purchasing power with the people and raging unemployment. It’s rearranging the furniture when the house is...

-The Indian Express Basheer’s energy shines through in his multi-dimensional academic career, which was marked by controversies and pathbreaking achievements. Inhabiting dualities defined Shamnad Basheer. Nicola Lacey, biographer of the eminent legal philosopher H L A Hart, wrote that Hart was surely an insider to Oxford philosophy, but always saw himself on the margins. Memories of Basheer kindle something similar: Inspiring students, intervening socially, recognised publicly and yet, secluded and distant....

-The Telegraph Dreze showed how Jammu and Kashmir outscored Gujarat on the basis of a raft of development indices New Delhi: Economist Jean Dreze held up a placard at a protest rally here on Wednesday, displaying stats to contest home minister Amit Shah’s claim that Jammu and Kashmir was less developed than the rest of India. Dreze showed how Jammu and Kashmir outscored Gujarat on the basis of a raft of development indices. “I...

-Down to Earth Over 60 years after the country got its first plan to rejuvenate the rivers, not a single basin has been spared from overexploitation All the 20 river basins of the country share the story of the Cauvery: how human interference has changed every river’s form and flow pattern over the past few decades. Water in the country’s three major rivers — the Indus, the Brahmaputra and the Ganga — has...