-The Indian Express India’s pulses production increased by nearly half in the space of two years, from 16-17 million tonnes to 23-24 million tonnes this year New Delhi: Till recently, there were two agri-commodities in which India was seen as being perpetually and increasingly import-dependent: edible oils and pulses. Between 2010-11 and 2016-17, the import value of the former soared from $4.72 billion to $10.89 billion, while from $2.25 billion to $4.24...

-Livemint.com While there are several creditable achievements, it is the deeper structural reforms where expectations from a strong government have not been met Amidst expectations of a magical transformation of the Indian economy, the Narendra Modi government took over the reins in May 2014. During the election campaign, people were led to believe that the Gujarat model of agricultural development, which delivered 8% growth in agriculture during fiscal years 2003-14, would be...

-The Hindu Political alignments should not come in the way of defending the fiscal rights of States My fellow Finance Ministers in the States, I hope you will agree that the award of the Finance Commission is vital to State finances. Some of us who met initially at Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, and later at Amaravati, Andhra Pradesh, are worried about the implications of the terms of reference (ToR) of the Finance Commission...

-The Telegraph Economist who served as finance minister dies at 90 Calcutta: Former Bengal finance minister Ashok Mitra, who also served as the chief economic adviser to the Indian government, passed away in a city nursing home on Tuesday morning. The Marxist economist was 90 and had been suffering from age-related complications. His wife Gouri had died 10 years ago. An economist by training - with a PhD under Nobel laureate economist Jan Tinbergen -...

-The Indian Express To deal with corruption, it is not enough to just get fiscal policies right. It is in our collective long-term interest to nurture individual values. I went to an optometrist last week, who gave me one of those cards to read where the font starts out large and then gets progressively small, to test your reading capacity. In this case what was interesting was the content of the card....