-Press release by NREGA Sangharsh Morcha and Peoples' Action for Employment Guarantee (PAEG) dated 9 July, 2019 Even as many parts of the county suffer from drought, the new government at the centre has allocated a mere Rs 60,000 crores for the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) for the ongoing financial year. This is Rs 1,084 crore less than the revised budget estimate for 2018-19. Expenditure would have been much...
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Getting the GDP numbers right -S Mahendra Dev
-The Indian Express Estimates are not perfect, but the process is revised and fine-tuned. Former Chief Economic Adviser Arvind Subramanian’s recent paper claims that the Indian GDP growth may have been overestimated by 2.5 per cent per annum between the period 2011-12 and 2016-17. A note by Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council (PMEAC) rejects the methodology, arguments and conclusions of Subramanian’s paper. A study done at our institute by Ashima Goyal...
More »Union Budget: At the bottom of the page lie Nirmala's deficit secrets -Devadeep Purohit
-The Telegraph Sitharaman spun a narRATive, listed some intent but did little to give the economy a much-needed push The nation had swooned over Narendra Modi’s Mazboot BhaRAT narRATive in April-May, giving the BJP a thumping victory in the Lok Sabha polls. The success of the saffron camp in spinning narRATives was in full display on Friday when Nirmala Sitharaman rose to present the Union budget 2019-20 that the ruling dispensation in...
More »More of the dismal same -Prabhat Patnaik
-The Indian Express The budget needed to break new ground, provide a thrust to a slowing economy. This budget lacks innovation. Economics has never been a strong point of the NDA government. Its only two major economic forays, demonetisation and the GST, have both turned out to be pretty disastrous. It was futile, therefore, to expect much from the Union Budget for 2019-20. Even so, one is surprised by the budget’s...
More »Despite being one of its birthplaces, India has forgotten many varieties of rice -Pooja Pillai
-The Indian Express The story of rice in India is complex, influenced as much by geography as by taste, faith, politics and contemporary nutrition science. But, after years of getting panned for being unhealthy, it is finally making its way back to the centre of the table. Is Basmati rice, with its pristinely white grain, the only variety that lends itself to making a biryani? It seems a RATher silly question...
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