-The Indian Express There is a worrying dearth of Indian economists working on agriculture today. In his classic Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went, John Kenneth Galbraith observed how the economics profession had a well-defined order of precedence. At the top were the economic theorists and specialists in banking and finance. At the bottom of the hierarchy were agricultural economists. George F. Warren from Cornell University was even worse — a...

-The Indian Express It is said the pollution from burning paddy straw is a factor in Delhi's poor air quality. Chandigarh: The burning of paddy straw continues unabated in both Punjab and Haryana with authorities in both the states unable to check the menace. With the harvesting season at the fag end, the farmers are now clearing their fields by burning the paddy straw causing air pollution. It is said the pollution from burning...

-The Indian Express Government cannot afford to wait any longer to address the building agricultural distress. The government and the political class seem oblivious to a deepening farm crisis, resulting from back-to-back monsoon failures and falling crop prices. One indicator of the growing agrarian distress is farmer suicides, no longer a phenomenon confined to Vidarbha or Telangana. The current year has seen farmers even in states like Karnataka, Odisha and Madhya...

-Hindustan Times In the 1970s Deng Xiaoping explained that China’s one-child policy was being introduced to ensure “the fruits of economic growth are not devoured by population growth”. Last week, Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s rationale for officially abandoning the policy was the reverse: To ensure economic growth is not wrecked by population decrease. But it is probably too late to change China’s demographic future. China’s population has begun to age — and age...

-The Indian Express Over-dependence on fossil fuels will hurt sustainable development in India For decades, mature economies have seen their jobs being off-shored to newly industrialising countries. To stop the bleeding, they are working hard to unleash the digital and renewable energy revolutions. The aggressive push to regain competitiveness by digital automation has been widely noted. What is less understood is the logic behind the energy transformation. In manufacturing economies, the cost...