School meals ensure nutrition for millions of vulnerable children across the world. Almost 370 million children worldwide are covered by school feeding programmes. While 100 million school children benefitted from the noon meal scheme in India prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, countries like Brazil (48 million), China (44 million), South Africa (9 million) and Nigeria (9 million) too run similar programmes for school children. However, an estimated 39 billion in-school...

-The Hindu To show Indian agriculture as being net taxed to argue for the farm laws has poor conceptual validity Over the past three decades, a major rationale offered in favour of liberalising Indian agriculture was that farmers were “net taxed”. In other words, incomes of farmers were kept artificially lower than what they should have been. It was argued that this “net taxation” existed because protectionist policies deprived farmers of higher...

-IdeasforIndia.in Examining the 2021-22 Union Budget with a political economy lens, Yamini Aiyar contends that the policy choices reflects Government of India’s propensity to centralise rather than to devolve, and a shift away from welfarism. Following the presentation of the Union Budget 2021-22 by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on 1 February, economists have carefully scrutinised the fiscal math and debated the economic rationale behind the policy choices. Beyond the fiscal math, the...

-The Hindu India’s leaders must recommit themselves to the ideas and activism of environmentalists involved with Uttarakhand Following flash floods at Chamoli in Uttarakhand, defence personnel are looking for missing persons in a mélange of rock, mud, water, and debris, airlifting rations to inaccessible villages, and repairing bridges and telecommunication networks. Social scientists are assessing the disaster’s impact on the region’s economy. Scientists and policy makers are debating whether climate change or...

-The Hindu ‘It moved from a revenue surplus to a revenue deficit State’ Chennai: Tamil Nadu’s fiscal indicators have deteriorated drastically from 2012-13 to 2018-19 and most borrowings in the recent years have gone to fund its revenue deficit, instead of capital expenditure, the 15th Finance Commission report tabled in the Parliament recently said. Tamil Nadu moved from a “revenue surplus” to a “revenue deficit” State after 2012-13, it noted. A revenue deficit...