-Down to Earth The rate at which informal housing is being destroyed probably far exceeds the rate at which formal housing is being constructed Troubled by the degradation of environment on and around railway tracks, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) recently directed Delhi government to relocate all illegal settlements along tracks in Delhi. The tribunal reasoned that the residents of these settlements practise open defecation and litter on the tracks. Housing of the...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Jean Dreze, eminent economist and a former member of the National Advisory Council during the UPA regime, was dropped from a high profile economics conference organized by the finance ministry.  Dreze, who has been critical of some of the measures of the NDA government, was invited to speak at the Delhi Economics Conclave on Friday.  "This is the invitation I received and accepted some time ago. On...

-The Indian Express My mother does not work”. In country after country, this expression is heard each time someone describes a woman not engaged in paid employment. A recent study by McKinsey, titled “The Power of Parity: How equality for women could drive $ 2 trillion in global growth”, has evidence that every “stay-at-home” woman directly damages a country’s GDP by billions. Its message is that every woman should “work”; India’s...

-The Hindu He stressed that his government seeks to roll out inclusive reforms that will lead to better lives for people and not just better headlines in pink newspapers. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday said that India’s performance on all economic parameters, including inflation and foreign investments, is now better than when his government joined office 17 months back. Speaking at the Delhi Economics Conclave 2015, Mr. Modi stressed that...

-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...