-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Centre will pursue more mergers in the state-run banking space as the aim is to have a handful of strong and bigger banks of international level, finance minister Arun Jaitley has said. "Today banking is not what it used to be 10-20 years ago... Is it necessary to have 30-32 public sector banks, some of them weak? Obviously not. What will you do with...

-Livemint.com A detailed look at Labour Bureau’s Quarterly Employment Survey (QES) methodology and design suggests that one shouldn’t read too much in these numbers New Delhi: Opposition parties and many commentators have been citing the Labour Bureau’s Quarterly Employment Survey (QES) numbers to attack the government over failure to generate employment). How credible are such claims? A detailed look at QES methodology and design suggests that one shouldn’t read too much in...

-The Hindu Liberalisation has eroded the institutional capacity to train young people who might pursue liberal values The other day, a student asked me what exactly the word ‘liberal’ mean. She wanted to know whether ‘liberalisation’ promotes ‘liberal’ values. She had noticed that institutions of higher education, which are supposed to promote liberal values, were finding it difficult to resist ideological and commercial pressures triggered by the process of economic liberalisation. So,...

-The Indian Express As the Modi government completes three years, here are three potentially game-changing steps it could now take to harness the sector’s unrealised potential Amidst the predictable tidal wave of opinion pieces to mark the Narendra Modi government’s third anniversary, one little event last week squeezed its way into the inside pages of a few newspapers. This was a call for a “farm strike” in Maharashtra from June 1,...

-Hindustan Times There are almost no jobs available in India’s high-growth economy. Job creation has plummeted to levels even below those of preceding UPA governments. Of the one million new people who join the workforce every month, only 0.01% of new workers added to the work force actually found work. For millions of young voters Prime Minister Modi’s most alluring election promise in 2014 was that his government would create ten million...