-The Times of India Despite more access to education, better household amenities and increased incomes, the economic gap between upper castes and dalit and tribal communities continues unchanged over the years, according to latest economic data from the NSSO. A comparison of average monthly expenditure of households belonging to dalit communities with upper caste households showed that in rural areas there was a gap of about 38% in 1999-2000 which changed only...

-The Hindu The Budget overlooks the fact that human capabilities are as important as physical capital for economic growth and the quality of life. It goes back to the days when growth and development sounded synonymous, physical capital was thought to be the key, and human capital took a back seat Once upon a time, around the end of the Second World War, there was a naive view in development economics that...

-The United Nations An extra 10 million people worldwide are likely to be unemployed by 2019, a new United Nations report has said today, pointing to slower growth, widening inequalities and economic turbulence as reasons behind the trend. According to the World Employment and Social Outlook - Trends 2015 (WESO) report, released today by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the next four years will see the total number of people out of...

-The Indian Express It's likely that India's crop production this year will be lower compared to 2013-14, given deficient rains both in the southwest (June-September) and northeast (October-December) monsoons impacting kharif as well as rabi plantings. But that by itself needn't be cause for concern. We have seen one-off farm output declines even in 2009-10, 2004-05 and 2002-03, which were also drought years. What should worry us more, instead, is the...

-The Hindu The findings from the latest International Labour Organisation report on real wages point to a mix of proactive initiatives and policy paralysis in different contexts. The study notes that continuing deceleration in the growth of global real wages and discriminatory pay gaps based on gender and nationality could sharpen household income inequalities. A most striking finding is that labour productivity growth outstripped increases in real wage between 1999 and...