-The Hindu Business Line Low food inflation and high services inflation in rural India is doing more bad than good for the rural population CPI Inflation in August came in at benign 3.21 per cent, although it recorded a marginal uptick from July. A deeper look at the numbers brings out the widening disparity between the urban and rural inflation. Rural inflation in August was almost half of urban retail inflation. With...

-The Hindu Business Line The government must simplify and rationalise GST, kickstart rural consumption, revive agriculture and tackle the lack of credit for capital creation, says former PM Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, an eminent economist himself, feels that the Narendra Modi-led government needs to come out of its habit of headline management and address the economic challenges which the country is facing today. “We cannot afford to deny that India is facing...

-The Hindu Attention needs to be paid to both cyclical and structural dimensions of India’s present economic slowdown India’s current economic slowdown is due to a combination of two underlying trends. First, there is the short-run cyclical slowdown exhibited by a number of high-frequency indicators, reflecting a significant fall in demand, especially for sectors such as automobiles, consumer durables and housing. Second, there is the more serious long-term fall in investment and savings...

-The Hindu If it’s the government’s case that NSSO figures are suspect, what has it based policy decisions on? Minister of State for Housing and Urban Affairs Hardeep Singh Puri said last week, “we definitely have a data crisis,” and blamed academics for creating a “false narrative”. Yet, at the heart of the data crisis in India is the Central government, which has been holding back important data. Most recently, it did...

-Livemint.com As we enter the new year, investors will do well to factor in a moderation in consumption demand due to the liquidity crisis and farm distress Analysts are getting increasingly wary about the outlook for consumption demand, even though investors are brushing aside these risks for now. In its 2019 India outlook, Credit Suisse said it would prefer investment-related stocks over consumption-focused ones in the coming year. The brokerage expects sharp...