-Hindustan Times Many years ago, Jagdish Bhagwati, a very distinguished economist long before he became one of the patron saints of the NDA, published an important paper on what he called Directly Unproductive Activities or DUP. These bore a close relation to what his friend and well-known South Asia scholar, Anne Krueger, had called rent-seeking activities in some slightly earlier work. Both made the important point that the social cost of...

Those who compare India with China on equal basis, could be left with egg on their face if the new Global Food Policy Report 2014-15 is to be read and believed. The recent report from International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) shows why India is still faring much worse as compared to its neighbours including China, in the areas of agriculture and food security. In 2012, China spent close to...

-The Financial Express In a column in The Financial Express, ("Time to tweak priority-sector lending", goo.gl/6O8AOL, February 6), the author made a case for "tweaking" priority-sector lending (PSL) norms which largely stipulate that the commercial banks direct credit towards certain vulnerable sectors and target population. Specifically, the article argued for revisiting the sectoral targets and cited a reduction in the share of agriculture sector in GDP as a valid reason...

-The Times of India MUMBAI: In a landmark judgment, the Bombay high court has paved the way for the state to pay higher compensation to farmers whose land it acquires for public projects. The court held that financial constraints or project cost escalations cannot be a reason to shortchange farmers and set aside a government decision to fix a multiplier factor of 1.1 on market rates even though the law says...

The India Country Report 2015 on Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) comes at a time when the Union Budget 2015-16 allegedly cut expenditure on several social sector schemes and programmes. This year's MDG country report says that India will fail to achieve two important targets pertaining to reducing hunger and maternal mortality by 2015, among others. Released by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI), the report says that India is...