-The Hindu Well-thought-out policies can reverse the results of incompetence; the onus is on the Centre to spend now Now it is official: India has managed to become the global leader in the number of new daily cases of COVID-19 and the worst performing of all major economies during the pandemic so far. How did we manage this double feat? Not through ‘acts of god’, but because of the incompetence and apathy...
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India must aim for wider consumer base, direct public spending accordingly -Suvodeep Rakshit and Avijit Puri
-The Indian Express To achieve economic growth of 7-8 per cent, the government needs to start addressing some of the traditional sore points such as the large infrastructure deficit, the weak financial sector, archaic land and labour laws, and the administrative and judicial hurdles. India entered the pandemic with declining growth and limited scope for a conventional and large fiscal stimulus. We had noted in an article (IE, January 20, ‘Limited scope...
More »Over three-fourth of workers lost their livelihoods since lockdown, finds ActionAid India's national survey of informal labourers
ActionAid Association's (AAA) national level survey among people dependent on the informal economy during the third phase of the national lockdown towards the end of May 2020 (i.e. between May 14th and May 22nd, 2020) has documented the "nature and extent of the transitions in the lives and livelihoods of informal workers, including migrant workers, during the pandemic and provide[s] an insight into the precarity they experience and the coping...
More »Why farmers are not cheering their exceptional feat this kharif season -Richard Mahapatra
-Down to Earth Highest rice acreage in six years, more farmers in farms, a bounty monsoon and an expected bumper harvest don't enthuse farmers as their earning dips It is a piece of news that everybody would love to cheer about, except those who made this possible. The current kharif season is exceptional. In comparison to last year, over eight million more hectares of farms are under cultivation this season. There are more...
More »PM-KISAN is not reaching all farmer households as intended -Bornali Bhandari, Santanu Pramanik and Sonalde Desai
-The Indian Express Given this uncertainty over the reach of PM-KISAN and its targeting, the relevance of the scheme needs to be carefully evaluated during this period. The Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) is the first universal basic income-type of scheme targeted towards landed farmers. It was introduced in December 2018 to manage agricultural stress. Initially, the scheme was targeted at small and medium landed farmers, but with the declining growth...
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