-Macroscan.com/ Livemint.com There is a common trope, fed especially to generations born after 1991, that economic progress and modernization in India really occurred only after ‘liberalizing’ economic reforms were introduced three decades ago. This is a travesty of the truth. Certainly, conditions for most Indians have improved since that watershed year. Per capita income went up more rapidly than before, life expectancy went up, infant and maternal mortality decreased, income poverty...

-IndiaTomorrow.net NEW DELHI: Many people were surprised when Union Home Minister Amit Shah was given the additional charge of the newly created Ministry of Cooperation. The Cooperation Ministry was earlier a part of the Ministry of Agriculture. But it was no amazement for those acquainted with how the cooperative movement plays a role in politics – state as well as national politics – and how BJP used the cooperatives from the state...

-TheWire.in Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Jayati Ghosh, says over the last 16 months of the pandemic the government’s handling of the economic crisis has been cruel and incompetent. One of India’s well-known and highly regarded economists has said the government’s refusal to provide income support to the unemployed and poor and instead asking them to take government guaranteed loans which the Chief Economic Advisor has said...

The recent Supreme Court of India’s judgments (please click here and here) related to ensuring food security of the migrant and unorganised sector workers through the provision of dry ration, running of community kitchens and proper implementation of the 'One Nation One Ration Card' scheme should come as no surprise to us. A recent review of some of the robust studies, which relied on multi-state surveys (or reference surveys), having...

-TheWire.in Despite the fact that India's financial inclusion infrastructure has a complex mix of self-help groups and small private banks offering credit to the poor, it has failed to deliver during the pandemic. When the pandemic struck, policymakers and prominent economists across the world called for financial infrastructures to be strengthened. They argued this would support the efficient channeling of relief through cash transfers or cheap loans. India was no exception to...