-IndiaToday.in The recent National Family Health Survey that was conducted between 2019 and 2021 busts many myths and also confirms some ugly realities of India. Numbers and data should be the two deities that any self-respecting media professional should respect and revere. Unfortunately, in the din and noise of acrimonious debates that revolve around matters of faith, a treasure trove of fascinating data that showcases an India that is both changing and...

-The Tribune The prices of essential food items have increased by 50% in seven years, whereas the real wage rate has risen by 22%. These figures show that inflation has outsmarted the Real income of the poor, making their lives miserable as the food basket constitutes a substantial proportion of the total expenditure on the poor. The net effect is that the poor earn less and take loans to maintain the...

-Livemint.com India’s lack of official data for estimates could impair policy formulation and thus hurt the economy Two different sets of poverty estimates for India were released recently. One of the papers was authored by Surjit Bhalla, Karan Bhasin, and Arvind Virmani and the second by Sutirtha Roy and Roy Weide, both affiliated to the World Bank. Both presented estimates for roughly the same period, after 2011-12, but ended up at starkly...

-NITI Aayog Working Paper, ISBN: 978-81-953811-7-3 Abstract -  The importance of agriculture in an economy usually declines as it climbs the development ladder. Raising agriculture productivity has been known to be an important precursor. Labour productivity in agriculture can either be increased by higher land productivity or higher land availability per farmer and mechanisation. In India, however, the dramatic increase in land productivity through industrial farming has caused severe environmental damage and...

-Business Standard The current growth in the Indian cultivator's real or inflation-adjusted income, at about 3.5 per cent, is barely a third of the growth rate required to achieve this goal Earlier this month, the Central government said in a reply in Parliament that it has taken several measures to double farmers’ income by 2022 and that the progress made so far indicates that it is ‘on the right track’. However, a closer...