-The Indian Express For Arvind Panagariya, the first Vice-Chairman of NITI Aayog, policy-making, rather than planning, will be his top priority. In his first interaction with officers of the erstwhile Planning Commission, he spoke at length on the need to push through labour reforms and strengthen the SME (small and medium enterprise) segment - the backbone of manufacturing - to take India up several notches in the competition ladder. On Tuesday, his...

-Economic and Political Weekly Examining the structural transformation in India and its developed states to know whether they have passed the Lewis turning point, this paper finds that there was slow structural change in labour markets at the national level. But states such as Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab and Haryana are on the verge of the Lewis turning point with faster non-farm sector Growth, high per capita income, urbanisation,...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The PMO appears to be backing the forest ministry's decision to allow diversion of forestland for linear projects in certain areas without seeking the gram sabha's approval, despite objections raised by the tribal affairs ministry. Although the tribal affairs ministry has strongly protested against the forest ministry's notification of October 28, 2014, on the ground that it violated the Forests Rights Act (FRA), its effort to issue a...

-IndiaSpend.com The wages of people living in rural India are no longer rising at the same rate as they were under the United Progressive Alliance government. Last week, The Indian Express reported that the average daily wage rate for rural India grew by 3.8% in November 2014 as compared to the same month the previous year. This is the lowest since 2005, said the paper. As recently as June, Growth figures were...

-The Hindu India's small farmers have been struggling for centuries now and they need social and governmental action to change their future Of India's 121 million agricultural holdings, 99 million are with small and marginal farmers, with a land share of just 44 per cent and a farmer population share of 87 per cent. With multiple cropping prevalent, such farmers account for 70 per cent of all vegetables and 52 per cent...