-The Hindu Business Line While the limitations of the concept of economic growth are acknowledged, we need a better index than HDI Despite claims that economic development as a branch of economic science emerged only in the 1950s, there is no doubt that the notion of development existed even in classical economic thought processes, emerging from the writings of Adam Smith and David Ricardo. The recognition of development economics as a discipline...

-The Business Standard In a country where 35 to 40 per cent of food is not consumed, the government urgently needs to reduce wastage to an acceptable level By current estimates, India's total population will be similar to China's by 2028, 1.45 billion. By 2050, India's population is expected to reach 1.7 billion, which will then be equivalent to nearly that of China and the US combined. A fundamental question then...

-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 Indian Express A headlong rush into PPPs will only leave a trail of disputes, renegotiations, corruption. The conventional wisdom in India on public-private partnerships (PPPs) is that they help governments raise capital to meet large infrastructure investment targets. But this rationale for promoting PPPs does not stand on strong foundations. There are three potential reasons for supporting PPPs. First, they enable governments to access more capital without visibly breaching fiscal targets. In...

-The Tribune The UPA's flagship programme MGNREGS changed the employment scene for the rural poor. While 100-day job guarantee was a novel step, loopholes and poor implementation rendered it a liability. The Modi govt hopes to gradually reinvent the scheme, if not entirely scrap it. Midway through the Congress-led UPA's second tenure - believed to be largely the courtesy of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) -...