-The Hindu Several myths persist about job creation, which can misguide policymaking Jobs are rarely far from the minds of citizenry. Politicians woke up to this fact in the run-up to the Bihar Assembly elections. It is for the first time that unemployment has become a big issue in an election. This is not surprising. Rising unemployment The economy had been slowing for nine quarters prior to the COVID-19 outbreak. Before the 2019 Lok...

-The Hindu In the post-COVID-19 world, we should make efforts to ensure that the ‘G’ in GDP is not ‘Gross’ but ‘Green’ History is divided into two periods: Before the Common Era or BCE and Common Era or CE. But given our experience this year, BCE could well stand for Before the COVID-19 Epidemic and CE for the COVID-19 Epidemic. To say that 2020 has been cataclysmic is to state the obvious...

-The Indian Express A collective of NREGA women activists discovers its political voice. As Jean Dreze recently observed, one of the key ideas behind NREGA was that it would serve as a platform for increasing the overall political capacities of workers. It was hoped that people would organise themselves to collectively demand work and, in the process, learn about other legal and constitutional provisions. While learning about the latter has been patchy,...

-The Hindu Business Line The govt’s POSHAN Abhiyaan is a step in the right direction. But for it to succeed an empowered community must form its backbone and the measures adopted should be inclusive, across the urban-rural and literacy fault-lines POSHAN (nutrition) has become the buzzword within the development community in the last couple of years. The launch of Prime Minister’s Overarching Scheme for Nutrition (POSHAN) Abhiyaan has given nutrition the much-required...

-Scroll.in Will the people impacted by the project be heard through the cacophony of money, careerism, certitude and bombastic populism? In years that the Kosi river floods in Bihar, government officials from Delhi and Patna rush to observe the river’s “wrath” from high-flying helicopters. Inevitably, political leaders, bureaucrats and sections of the media delude the Indian public by blaming Nepal for releasing water. Then, they announce that they have the answer to save...