-Newsclick.in The relatively new and fragile start-up ecosystem is not a solution to the larger problem of pauperisation of the working population of the country. In May 2022, a report in the magazine, The Economist, claimed that “a novel confluence of forces stands to transform India’s economy over the next decade, improving the lives of 1.4 billion people and changing the balance of power in Asia. Technological leaps, the energy transition, and...

-ThePrint.in From a record-breaking number of households demanding work under the MGNREGS to the stark decline in consumption and FMCG sales — all signs point to a rural livelihood crisis. New Delhi: Consider a job offer where day wages are less than both statutory minimum wages and market wages for unskilled workers. The work may last for about 10 days at a time, and payments may take more than two weeks, at...

-TheWire.in A performance audit brings home the point of what happens when the national auditor is denied access to information and records. A recently concluded performance audit on the functioning of District Mineral Foundation (DMF) Trusts in Jharkhand has indicted the state’s Mining and Geology Department for failing to furnish the actual figures of collections from mining leaseholders. Bringing the sad state of affairs to public notice, the national auditor said, “There were...

-Livemint.com India’s lack of official data for estimates could impair policy formulation and thus hurt the economy Two different sets of poverty estimates for India were released recently. One of the papers was authored by Surjit Bhalla, Karan Bhasin, and Arvind Virmani and the second by Sutirtha Roy and Roy Weide, both affiliated to the World Bank. Both presented estimates for roughly the same period, after 2011-12, but ended up at starkly...

-Financial Express Dataset and methodological weaknesses cast doubt on recent poverty estimates that claim drastic reduction Bhalla, Bhasin and Virmani in a working paper (IMF), claimed India’s poverty, per a $1.9 per person per day poverty line (at PPP), was 0.9% of the population in 2020. Thanks to government transfer of free rations of 5 kg per person month, it fell to 0.8% (from 0.9% in 2019). Roy and de Velt, for...