-The Indian Express Reform of grain management system could free up resources for infrastructure investment. With GDP growth rate plummeting to 4.5 per cent and with the agriculture GDP (GDPA) growth at 2.1 per cent in the SECond quarter of this fiscal year, everyone concerned with the economy is anxious. The question being asked is whether the Indian economy can be put back on the 7-8 per cent growth trajectory and can...

-Livemint.com News of India recording the world’s most New Year’s Day births seems to have revived talk of a strict population control policy. But there is no need for panic. Nor state intervention. For decades, doomsday theories of our population boom have been used to explainrising poverty and unemployment, food shortages and health crises, environmental degradation and climate change. This New Year’s Day, Unicef, the United Nations’ children’s agency, estimated that nearly...

-The New Indian Express The Survey of India plans to use drones to create a high-resolution map of every inch of India. It comes with unprecedented privacy and SECurity challenges The Survey of India (SoI) has embarked upon an ambitious project of using drone imaging to create an ultra-high resolution spatial and topographic map of India. Professor Ashutosh Sharma, SECretary, Department of Science and Technology, calls it the biggest endeavour in Indian...

-The Indian Express There’s a need to come up with a new model of growth through focused value chains. When it comes to exports, there are several key issues that affect the various stakeholders concerned. It’s almost sardonic that when you type “agrarian” in Google, it invariably suggests “crisis” as the following word. In 2019, the Indian farm SECtor grew minus 0.1% year-on-year in January-March and 2% and 2.1% in the next...

-Livemint.com Using India’s Public Distribution System (PDS) as a case study, new research shows social transfers may reduce labour supply, but increase wages A common belief about social transfers is that they make their recipients lazy, decrease labour supply and do not reduce poverty. According to research that examines India’s largest social transfer programme, the public distribution system (PDS), social transfers indeed reduce labour supply but this increases wages and alleviates poverty. In...