-TheWire.in The Narendra Modi government's push to have research institutions depend less on public funds has been turned into a bad idea by the government's own priorities. “Innovate, patent, produce, prosper.” Prime Minister Narendra Modi delivered these words in his inaugural address at the 107th Indian Science Congress, now underway in Bengaluru. Modi’s prescription (first advanced in early 2018) describes a straightforward path to success but it also quietly assumes an environment and...

-Livemint.com News of India recording the world’s most New Year’s Day births seems to have revived talk of a strict population control policy. But there is no need for panic. Nor state intervention. For decades, doomsday theories of our population boom have been used to explainrising poverty and unemployment, food shortages and health crises, environmental degradation and climate change. This New Year’s Day, Unicef, the United Nations’ children’s agency, estimated that nearly...

-The Hindu “Details given by people to enumerators will be accepted,” Union Home Ministry spokesperson says. The Union Home Ministry on Wednesday clarified that no person needs to submit any documents during the house-to-house survey for updating the National Population Register and that information provided by individuals would be accepted and recorded. Through a series of tweets, the Ministry sought to deny the thrust of a report in The Hindu headlined NPR trial...

-PTI The first meeting of the SCES is scheduled on January 6, 2020 The statistics ministry has constituted a 28 member Standing Committee on Statistics (SCES) chaired by former Chief Statistician Pronab Sen to improve quality of data amid criticism of the government over political interference. “The first meeting of the SCES is scheduled on January 6, 2020. The agenda would be very broad based. We will come to know about that only...

-Livemint.com Using India’s Public Distribution System (PDS) as a case study, new research shows social transfers may reduce labour supply, but increase wages A common belief about social transfers is that they make their recipients lazy, decrease labour supply and do not reduce poverty. According to research that examines India’s largest social transfer programme, the public distribution system (PDS), social transfers indeed reduce labour supply but this increases wages and alleviates poverty. In...