-The Indian Express Claims that Aadhaar has increased the demand and allocations of NREGA work rest on several faulty assumptions. Two newspaper articles in the Times of India and Financial Express claimed that Aadhaar linking boosts MGNREGA and has cut wage payment delays. Both articles were based on a working paper, “A Friend Indeed”, by members of the Digital Identity Research Initiative (DIRI) at the Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad. The ISB...

-Livemint.com Systematic analysis of groundwater conservation methods must be conducted to forestall the water crisis India’s over-exploitation of groundwater is contributing to—as stated by NITI Aayog—“the worst water crisis in its history”. Groundwater is one of the most important water sources in India accounting for 63% of all irrigation water and over 80% of the rural and urban domestic water supplies. In fact, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)...

-The Hindu Business LineSustainable development goals are not being taken seriously. Anti-poverty schemes are not backed by funds or commitmentIndia is a signatory to the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and is committed to achieving them. SDG1 aims to ?end poverty in all its forms everywhere? by 2030. It is true that poverty has declined in India. However, it is also true that an extremely large proportion of Indians suffers...

-Livemint.comThere is a growing recognition among policymakers of the need for a multidimensional approach to assess deprivationThere's been some good news for India over the last month. Three different robust, credible measures of poverty have recorded a dramatic reduction in the incidence of poverty in India. The most straightforward of these, the World Bank's estimate of the number of people living on less than $1.90 per day on a purchasing...

For long, economists have argued among themselves whether income should be the only criterion for measuring poverty. After all, in real life a person can face multiple deprivations, say, in terms of access to education, health and living standards, among others. The multidimensional poverty index (MPI), which offers a valuable complement to traditional income-based poverty measures, was first introduced in the 2010 Human Development Report (HDR). The MPI looks at...