-The Telegraph Below-normal and drought are the new normal. Since 2012 there has only been one normal monsoon. Monsoons follow their own patterns, unpredictable as they may be. In the past, certain periods, spanning a decade or sometimes two, have had higher frequencies of droughts and at the moment, we seem to be stuck in such a cycle. Between 1900 and the year 2000, there was one drought per decade. But...
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Solar pump scheme needs serious relook -Chandra Bhushan
-The Financial Express The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) recently rolled out a massive solar-pump programme called the PM-KUSUM scheme. The scheme has a target to set up 25,750 megawatts (MW) solar capacity by 2022 to power irrigation pumps, with central financial support of Rs 34,422 crore. It includes installation of 1.75 million off-grid and 1 million on-grid solar pumps as well as 10,000 MW of solar capacity in rural...
More »Data on AES related deaths in Bihar during May-June this year is fraught with confusion
In the month of June this year, encephalitis related deaths in Bihar's Muzaffarpur district grabbed the headlines. Actually, most of the children, who were admitted or died at Shri Krishna Medical College and Hospital (SKMCH), hailed from East Champaran, Vaishali, Sitamarhi and Samastipur apart from Muzaffarpur. Unfortunately, till recently official data on the number of cases and deaths related to Japanese Encephalitis (JE) and Acute Encephalitis Syndrome (AES) was unavailable for...
More »There is a fundamental problem of demand today. At the core of it is incomes that aren't rising enough -Harish Damodaran
-The Indian Express The certainty that producers once enjoyed — of finding buyers for their wares without doing much beyond minor price adjustments to bring supply and demand into equilibrium — has ceased to exist. India traditionally never had a demand problem. On the contrary, its economy was always supply-constrained. Proof of no demand paucity is that between 2000-01 and 2015-16, domestic consumption of both finished steel and cement roughly trebled, from...
More »Food Subsidy in Cash or Kind: The Wrong Debate -Anirudh Krishna and Tushar Agrawal
-Economic and Political Weekly The need for the public distribution system varies widely across states and districts. In some districts, the poor draw more than 80% of their grain from thePDS, but in other districts this share is less than 10%. A wide diversity of relationships with the PDS exist, suggesting a need for alternative modes of provisioning. A variable geometry of Food provisioning might emerge, with cash working better for...
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