-The Hindu Bhuira's women are coping with the higher workload by creating vastly more flexible family and community structures. And they are simultaneously pushing towards modernity much faster than their neighbours. Everyone in the village sneaks a glance when Upasana Kumari drives her White Maruti 800 to work. “Driving a car is intoxicating,” says Kumari. A winding, muddy, single lane road that starts from the edge of the hillock where Kumari’s house...

-The Indian Express Exploring the role of the black economy in political finance and how it subverts democracy. Book: Costs of Democracy: Political Finance in India Editors: Devesh Kapur & Milan Vaishnav Publisher: Oxford University Press Page: 311   Price: Rs 750 Money in politics is an issue of great concern for the Indian polity. Most believe it undermines democracy in India so that what formally looks like a great democracy turns out to be just...

-National Herald Maitreesh Ghatak, Professor of Economics at London School of Economics, in an interview to Tathagata Bhattacharya says the government has failed on many counts At the end of the day, it is growth and employment generation via new investment that is key to long-term economic progress. Various welfare schemes are a way of providing a social safety net to the poor in the short-run. It is performance along these two...

-MoneyControl.com A continued property market slowdown and a vegetable glut may have pushed landless labourers back to villages, seeking daily jobs and depressing wage growth India’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth looks set to cruise along the 7-7.5 percent trail, partly aided by steady farm incomes and record harvests on the back of plentiful summer rains over the last three years. But it may still be early to open the bubbly yet.  The...

-The Hindu India’s GDP growth continues to be powered by consumption, not investments A question being raised about the GDP estimates for the first quarter of this year (April-June) is: How should 8.2% GDP growth be interpreted in, or reconciled with, the overall context of some of the pronounced trends in the economy? These include the depreciating rupee, rising bank bad loans, or non-performing assets (NPAs), a trade deficit that has shot...