-The Indian Express For residents of many slum colonies situated across Mumbai it is not possible to put into practice any of the protective measures against COVID-19 prescribed by the WHO, including social distancing. On Thursday, The Indian Express reported that while there has been no evidence of community transmission in Maharashtra, the state has reported over 45 cases of coronavirus along with one death. Amid this outbreak, one piece of advice that...

-The Indian Express Policymakers need to stop thinking about India as a perennially supply-constrained economy focusing almost all policies and reforms to easing these constraints. Instead, it is time to let domestic demand play a greater role in India’s growth story. India’s fourth quarter GDP growth (calendar year 2019) printed another sub-5 per cent growth rate. It would have been lower had it not been for the large downward revisions to previous...

-TheWire.in Significant downward revision in GDP growth during Q1 and Q2 of FY19 has been one of the key reasons for boosting GDP growth in the corresponding quarters of FY'20. India’s gross domestic product (GDP) estimation by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) has been a story of upward and downward revisions in the last year. While the GDP for Q3-FY’20 is estimated at 4.7%, its slowest pace in almost seven years, what is...

-TheWire.in Making crop insurance mandatory for loanee farmers provided an attractive deal for insurance companies. Without this, will the business still be viable? This is the first in a two-part series about the changes made to the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana. On February 19, 2020, the Union Cabinet approved major modifications to the two crop insurance schemes, the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) and Restructured Weather Based Crop Insurance Scheme (RWBCIS). While...

-Economic and Political Weekly The caste (jati)-based practice of untouchability in India, shifting the focus from the victims of this practice, the ex-untouchables (Dalits), to the perpetrators, the non-Dalits is examined by identifying and disaggregating communities that continue to practise untouchability. The second wave of the India Human Development Survey data has been used to generate a socio-economic profile of those who practise untouchability in India, and check the hypothesis that...