-The Indian Express Behind the agitation, stagnant income and deteriorating terms of trade for agriculture New Delhi: Why are Indian farmers an angry lot today — stopping the supply of vegetables to cities and even spilling milk on roads? An answer to this can be found in the estimates of gross domestic product/ national income growth from the Central Statistics Office. The accompanying table shows two sets of growth figures. The first is...

-The Hindu The social activist whose new book on the RTI is just out, worries about the doublespeak in politics today, where rhetoric and substance never match The past couple of months have been hectic for Aruna Roy. The social activist and Magsaysay Award winner has been travelling across the country to promote her book, The RTI Story: Power to the People, which came out in April. After waiting more than a...

-Business Standard Over the past four years, through its twin policies of Jan Dhan Yojana and demonetisation, the govt has taken necessary steps to expand banking services substantially. Mumbai: People’s demand for cash continues to head northwards compared to pre-demonetisation levels despite the frequency of digital transactions going up and a substantial increase in bank deposits since November 2016. Currency with the public (CwP), or people’s demand for cash or currency, is 7...

-The Telegraph As Prime Minister Narendra Modi prepares to mark his fourth anniversary in power, V. Kumara Swamy takes stock of how hollow his promises to farmers have been. Will there be a price to pay? Hemant Patidar, a farmer, has been camping at the Mandsaur mandi in Madhya Pradesh with 15 quintals of “good quality” garlic for more than a week now. The price has been on a downslide for the...

-The Indian Express The problem is under-employment. It won’t be resolved if the residually-employed are notionally shifted from the informal to formal sector. In an article in January, Soumya Kanti Ghosh and Pulak Ghosh (Ghosh and Ghosh) claimed that seven million new jobs have been created in the formal sector. Their claim is based on the increase in registration under the Employees Provident Fund (EPFO), National Pension Scheme and Employees State Insurance...