-PTI GENEVA: India needs to increase women's participation in labour markets, build on its experience of its flagship employment scheme and provide social housing for the working poor to tackle unemployment, the ILO said today as it warned of a grim global unemployment situation. "Decreased labour force participation of women in India is a big problem. It is very important to promote their participation, their involvement in the Indian Economy," the chief...

-Livemint.com It’s time to look at the deleterious environmental impact of subsidies so as to attain correct pricing of resources A few days before Delhi’s odd-even rule—a road rationing scheme in which odd- and even-numbered cars were allowed to ply on roads on alternate days—was to be implemented, Delhi deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia appeared on a television channel to answer questions on the rule. During the show, Sisodia admitted that the...

-Livemint.com Traditionally, public policy has tended to view Indian farmers as what is described in economic history as the “dumb peasant” Last week, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government launched a revamped crop insurance scheme. At first glance, the scheme, christened Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana, looks mostly like a reworking of the risk cover already in place; actually, it is much more. Not only does it take a big step in de-risking...

-CaravanMagazine.in Bina Agarwal is a Professor of Development Economics and Environment at the University of Manchester, UK. Prior to this, she was the Director and Professor of Economics at the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi University. Agarwal has written extensively on land, livelihoods and property rights; environment and development; the political economy of gender; poverty and inequality; legal change; and agriculture and technological transformation. Her best known work is A Field...

-Hindustan Times Washington: Mark Zuckerberg’s Free Basics, the free but restrictive internet service that has run into trouble with Indian authorities, has picked up yet another opponent, the World Bank. Its World Development Report released Wednesday called Free Basics, which is a part of Facebook’s internet.org initiative, the “antithesis of net neutrality and a distortion of markets”. The bank is not opposing Free Basics specifically, or its Indian rollout. It believes any attempt...