The 2009 Human Development Report (HDR), released simultaneously across the world on Monday, makes a strong case for removing barriers to migration within and across borders, arguing that human movement had brought perceptible all-round benefits and held the potential to improve the lives of millions of poor and low-skilled people. Released jointly here by Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia and United Nations Resident Coordinator Patrice Coeur-Bizot, the...

It is well known that Amartya Sen is the greatest economist that India has ever produced. His credentials were well established even before he got the Nobel Prize. With his latest book — The Idea of Justice — he has also established himself as a world-class moral philosopher who could come up with great abstractions and generalisations that no other Indian thinker could achieve earlier. The Indian academia, so far, has...

The spectre of inflation has returned to haunt India. It is not even six months since the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government returned to power but its inability to control food prices is arguably its single biggest failure till now. The inflation rate will eventually come down sometime in the (hopefully) not-too-distant future and the government will surely take credit for bringing prices down as and when that happens. But...

To help farmers reeling under drought conditions  AHMEDABAD: Cooperative milk dairies in Gujarat have submitted a joint memorandum to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, requesting him to take immediate steps to discourage import of skimmed milk powder and butter oil and prevent export of ingredients used for manufacturing cattle feed. Among measures they have suggested to achieve the same, are restoration of customs duty on import of milk powder to the...

Did we just miss a major opportunity? For short while, it seemed that the global financial crisis would focus minds on what is wrong with the current economic growth model and how we can go about changing it. Unfortunately, that moment seems to have passed, at least until the next crisis comes along (which, in current trends, will not be long, since all the major forces that led to the...