-Livemint.com Drastic fall in ownership of male cattle in rural India is testimony to the benefits of farm mechanization in agriculture New Delhi: Delivering his customary Vijayadashami speech, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat advised farmers to adopt “cow-based farming” practices as a way out of poverty. “When we talk about farming with less capital, organic in nature, naturally the point is raised that the large number of farmers in our...

-TheWire.in In addition to “launching” a scheme that basically already existed, the prime minister’s claim that his government has a good record on rural electrification contradicts the data. Prime Minister Narendra Modi this week announced a reportedly brand new scheme to electrify all villages in India and to provide electricity to all by the end of 2018. The scheme was called the Pradhan Mantri Sahaj Bijli Har Ghar Yojana or ‘Saubhagya’ intiative....

-Firstpost.com So, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has got his three wise men and one wise woman to advise him on managing the economy. The Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council (PMEAC) has been revived with Bibek Debroy as chairman and Surjit Bhalla, Rathin Roy and Ashima Goyal as members. Ratan Watal, a career bureaucrat, will be member secretary. No one can deny that it’s a great team with impeccable credentials, both as economists...

-TheWire.in Diane Coffey and Dean Spears’ Where India Goes: Abandoned Toilets, Stunted Development and the Costs of Caste is a path breaking addition to the literature on child malnutrition and development policy in India. The history of global health has been marked with a dramatic turnaround starting from around the mid to late 19th century. This period witnessed an unprecedented decline in death rate and a steady increase in the life expectancy...

-Livemint.com The trajectory of wealth concentration in the country, not just the levels of recently estimated inequality, is important A flurry of estimates regarding Indian inequality have captured public interest recently. Whether one believes the wealth inequality numbers presented by Credit Suisse or the distributional income accounts by Lucas Chancel and Thomas Piketty, evidence seems to state that India has high economic disparities. But inequality is to be expected in a developing...