-The Guardian India cannot support an agreement that ignores food security when millions of its people go to bed hungry each night There is a view on global trade negotiations that has been propagated by a spate of commentaries and news analysis over the past few months. It runs broadly as follows: the multilateral trade regime had been limping to a slow death because of the failure of the Doha development round...

The Business Standard The Planning Commission has not been central to the policymaking process since the mid-1960s In his Independence Day speech, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the end of the Planning Commission. There will be few mourners at its funeral, mainly old war horses like me. So this is in the nature of an obituary for an institution in which I served for a decade and a half, and where I...

-Economic and Political Weekly How will the amendments to the Factories Act affect women workers? How do women view the "protections" and night work? Apoorva Kaiwar (akaiwar@yahoo.co.in) is a labour lawyer and consultant on issues of gender and labour. The central government is proposing to amend several labour laws. The process of amending them has been underway since 2011, which means that it is not only the new dispensation that is eager to...

-The Hindu The government deserves congratulations for its firm stand at the WTO, which finds support in Rodrik's trilemma The Princeton don Dani Rodrik is one of the world's leading economists. He is a firm believer in and supporter of globalisation. However, he has also posed a famous "globalisation trilemma." A trilemma describes a situation where only two of three things can hold true at the same time. If any two out...

-The Financial Express World Bank's latest data suggests realisation of millenium development goals may not be far off. Reduction of poverty and hence, how it is measured, has long been a contentious political economy issue in India. There is general discomfort every time the headcount ratio of the number of poor, based upon an accepted methodology recommended by an expert committee, declines; this then triggers a process to revisit known issues by...