-The Indian Express India needs a national effort to speed up human development. That India was ranked 135 out of 187 countries on UNDP's human development index is perhaps the greatest concern for a nation with global ambition. In order to sustain our growth momentum and translate the gains of growth into wellbeing at a faster pace, India needs to rejig its strategy for accelerated human development. The performance in education and health...

-The Hindustan Times The Independent Evaluation Office (IEO), which recommended the scrapping of its parent body, the Planning Commission, has found that its funding is being quietly choked. The IEO is an attached office of the Commission and receives money from it for conducting evaluation studies on different programmes of the government. On June 23, the IEO bit the hand that fed it: It made a report to the prime minister's office (PMO)...

-Outlook More government took Himachal near the top of development indices In the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections, the buzz around the so-called ‘Gujarat model' was such that without really knowing what it stood for, everyone wanted it. ‘Minimum Government, Maximum Governance' is as close as one could get in terms of concrete proposals. However, when one looks at the achievements of Gujarat, the buzz turns to a whimper (see...

-The Hindu Business Line While the limitations of the concept of economic growth are acknowledged, we need a better index than HDI Despite claims that economic development as a branch of economic science emerged only in the 1950s, there is no doubt that the notion of development existed even in classical economic thought processes, emerging from the writings of Adam Smith and David Ricardo. The recognition of development economics as a discipline...

-The Business Standard Government is diluting green regulations, not reforming them In his speech from the Red Fort on Independence Day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said many sensible things about Indian manufacturing. It is certainly true that it must be a focus area for his government. As a proportion of India's gross domestic product (GDP), the share of Indian manufacturing peaked in 1996-97, at the pitifully low percentage of a little over...