-The Hindu Business Line Villagers are turning Entrepreneurs by renting out their solar lamps Ibrahimpur duli village in Uttar Pradesh’s Faizabad district is on the electricity grid. But the power here is erratic. “It comes only at night around 9 or 10 pm with frequent shut downs,” says 54-year-old Ram Lallan who along with his wife Kusma Devi runs a solar enterprise to offer off-grid technology solutions to consumers in the region. The couple...

-The Hindu Business Line The only way this story of the Indian farmer will change is if policymakers ensure better remuneration for them The peasant (in India) is born in debt, lives in debt, dies in debt and bequeaths debt. This is what Sir Malcolm Darling, a famous British researcher and writer, wrote in 1925 after studying the condition of undivided Punjab’s peasants. Had Darling been alive today he would have rephrased his...

-The Economic Times What's on your plate may be good for you. But, what if the plate itself is nutritious? This is not light-headed talk from going too long without a meal, but an idea that sprouted in the mind of a groundwater researcher-turned-Entrepreneur Narayana Peesapathy on a flight. As Peesapathy watched a man pick at his lunch with a cracker after he accidentally broke his plastic spoon, he wondered if...

-The Hindu Business Line The best way to celebrate Ambedkar As we celebrate BR Ambedkar’s 125th birth anniversary, it is important to remember that his vision of economic equality for dalits is still a distant dream. He had told the Constituent Assembly on November 25, 1949: “We are entering an era of political equality. But economically and socially we remain a deeply unequal society. Unless we resolve this contradiction, inequality will destroy...

-Livemint.com The quality of output and influence in policymaking have been disappointing In order to give a flavour of how important think tanks in Washington DC have been to the policymakers, Peter W. Singer, an American political scientist, once wrote: “...when President Reagan took office in 1981, he quickly gave every member of his cabinet an 1,100-page book from the Heritage Foundation, Mandate for Leadership, that provided an outline for conservative principles...