-The Hindu Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee says the deficit numbers are a bit imaginary, not a big deal if breached Mumbai: Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee has said that he would not back fiscal tightening in the current economic environment. Prof. Banerjee added that the real constraint to the state of education in the country in the current climate of economic slowdown was not lack of money, but the lack of attention paid to...

-NDTV Lately, the January releases from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) about the advanced estimates of national income have a touch of seasonal chill. The estimate of the real GDP growth rate for 2019-20 has touched 5%, falling from 6.8% in 2018-19, continuing a downward slide that started in 2016-17. This is the lowest growth rate since 2008-09, which was the year of the global financial crisis. Indeed, in the entire...

-Down to Earth Latest NITI Aayog counts no state as ‘achiever’; overall performance of most ‘performing’, ‘laggard’ states towards cutting poverty dipped With every fifth Indian still below the poverty line, the country needs to take huge strides to alleviate poverty. For most states, though, it did not seem the priority, going by the poverty score card in the SDG Index 2019-20 released by the NITI Aayog just before 2019 ended. The index...

-The Hindu Misplaced optimism needs to cede ground to tangible policy interventions The government’s advance estimates for economic output and growth for the fiscal year ending in March may raise eyebrows, but only for the wrong reasons. The National Statistical Office (NSO) has estimated that Gross Domestic Product (GDP) will expand by 5% in the 12-month period, in line with the Reserve Bank of India’s sharp downward revision last month in its...

-PTI The World Bank said India's growth rate was likely to recover to 5.8 per cent in the following financial year. Washington: The World Bank has projected a five per cent growth rate for India in the 2019-2020 fiscal, but said it was likely to recover to 5.8 per cent in the following financial year. The growth rate for Bangladesh has been projected to remain above seven per cent through the forecast horizon...