-The Hindu Business Line The Ayushman Bharat programme must aim to reverse poverty caused by healthcare expenses The state of India’s healthcare system is somewhat dichotomous — the country is a global supplier of life-saving, affordable and good quality generic medicines, yet lakhs of families are driven into poverty because they are forced to spend much of their earnings and savings on medications to treat chronic and life-threatening diseases. The poor, particularly,...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Congress on Monday asserted that boastful claims and sermons on the economy after the completion of four years of the Narendra Modi government were of little value as the lives of ordinary people had worsened because of reckless decisions and administrative incompetence at a time when the global economy was looking up. Former finance minister P. Chidambaram said at a news conference: "The RBI's Consumer Confidence Survey...

-The Hindu Why measuring inequality is not the same as measuring changes in the level of poverty in India In recent years, there has been a lot of discussion on increasing inequality within several countries of the world, including India, particularly after the publication of Thomas Piketty’s book on inequality. It is true that rising inequality has adverse economic and social consequences. The Gini coefficient or other measures of inequality are being...

-PTI Director of CUTS International, George Cheriyan said that the consumption of chemical fertilisers in the country has been increasing along with level of agriculture production. Just 19 per cent farmers are practicing organic farming in Rajasthan even as 91 per cent were aware of the ill-effects of chemical farming, a survey has revealed. The fact came to the fore in a baseline survey conducted by CUTS International among 1,795 consumers,  644 farmers...

-Livemint.com Universal basic income (UBI) cannot come at the cost of existing welfare schemes and exclusive reliance on Aadhaar-linked cash transfers can prove to be short-sighted, says Carnegie India report New Delhi: A universal basic income (UBI) for Indian citizens cannot come at the cost of withdrawing existing welfare schemes and an exclusive reliance on Aadhaar-linked welfare payments for cash transfers can prove to be short-sighted, says new research. The central design features...