-The Indian Express The report, prepared jointly by Irish aid agency Concern Worldwide and German organisation Welt Hunger Hilfe termed the level of hunger in India "serious". India slipped to 102 position in the 2019 Global Hunger Index featuring 117 countries, behind Nepal, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Over one in every five children in India is “wasted” (low weight for height), the highest for any country in the report. The share of wasting...

-The Indian Express This year’s Nobel laureates shone the light on ways to address poverty As a young research associate, I stopped at a roadside dhaba with my boss, me armed with hand-sanitiser and a spoon, while my boss dug in to a plate of fish with her hands, devoured it down to the bones, washed her hands at the public sink, and proceeded to the car. My boss was Esther...

-The Indian Express The scheduled hearing will decide the legality of several cases of land acquisition that took place across the country before 2009. The matter also raises significant questions on judicial discipline, and how judgments of the court are applied while deciding subsequent cases on similar issues. On Tuesday, a five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court will begin hearing a case to clarify the interpretation of the law on...

-The Indian Express Banerjee, Duflo and Kremer introduced a paradigm shift in approach to alleviating poverty. The Nobel Prize in Economics for 2019 has been awarded to Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer for “their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty”. The approach, popularly known as Randomised Control Trial (RCT), has been the buzzword among development economists for almost two decades. Banerjee, Duflo and Kremer have used this technique (inspired...

-The Hindu Business Line The WTO hasn’t got the US to cut its cotton subsidies. This has hurt developing nations and distorted global trade in the commodity Recognising the importance of cotton in agriculture development, poverty reduction and international trade, World Trade Organization (WTO) observed World Cotton Day on October 7. While this initiative is laudable, it does not conceal the harsh reality that the WTO has failed repeatedly in its efforts...