-The Telegraph After the third general elections held in 1962, the scholar-statesman, C. Rajagopalachari, wrote a fascinating, if now forgotten, essay on the imperfections of our young democracy. "The Indian electorate", remarked Rajaji, "suffers from well-known defects from which Western democracies are relatively free. The Indian voters are in great measure poor and vulnerable to bribery: even a day's expense for food serves to buy a large number of the poor...

-The Indian Express Protests by the people against inequality are producing governments that move exactly in the opposite direction We all know that the world is an unequal place, both across and within countries. We also know that across the world, people are expressing their anger and disgust at this inequality. This is increasingly revealed in extreme and often paradoxical political results. In the US, a vote against the establishment has just...

-Bangalore Mirror ICAR researchers say subsidised electricity benefitting only medium and large farmers Stating that the policy decision to provide free or subsidised electricity has been a key driver for widespread groundwater exploitation, estimates by ICAR-Indian Institute of Soil and Water Conservation, Research Centre, Ballari, reveal that in Karnataka, groundwater depletion has forced farmers to drill up to depths of 200 to 300 metres, costing about Rs 2.5-3 lakh for a successful...

-Scroll.in India’s first chief statistician, Pronab Sen, is now country director of the International Growth Centre, which seeks to build effective growth facilities through engagement between policymakers and researchers. In this interview to Scroll.in, he speaks on the 50 days of demonetisation, its failings, its severe impact on the poor, the loss of credibility of the Reserve Bank of India, the push to make India a cashless or less-cash economy, and...

-The Telegraph A distinguished Ugandan social scientist of Indian origin,whom I happened to meet earlier this month at an academic conference, told me that Narendra Modi's demonetization reminded him of the fiat in 1972 of the Ugandan dictator, Idi Amin, that all Asians should quit Uganda within a period of three months. His analogy, of course, would be considered inapposite for an obvious reason: expelling people from their places of domicile,...