-Hindustan Times Just how many people in India are poor? The question remains unanswered with yet another government panel failing to define an official “poverty line”. After a year and half of work , a 16-member task force headed by NITI Aayog vice chairman Arvind Panagariya has failed to reach a consensus and suggested to the government that another panel of specialists be asked to do the job. HT has a copy of...

-The Hindu The proposed labour reforms seek to weaken worker protection at a time when the Indian economy is not creating enough jobs, and the right kind of jobs. On September 2, 10 trade unions in India organised what was said to be one of the largest labour strikes in history. An estimated 120 million workers took part. The unions were protesting against the government’s unwillingness to grant a 12-point charter of...

-The Times of India India lost 1.4 million lives to air pollution in 2013, while in China the toll was 1.6 million, estimates a World Bank report released on Thursday. The report, released by the World Bank and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, shows that in 2013 more than five million deaths worldwide were attributed to health conditions caused by air pollution. About 60% of them were in the world's...

-The Hindu The pursuit of full employment of labour cannot primarily rely on domestic private investment, much less FDI. Only public investment will steady us in the long run. We are increasingly told that the inflow of capital — particularly the foreign direct investment (FDI) variety — increases employment levels and contributes to economic growth. In a rare interview given to The Wall Street Journal in May, Prime Minister Narendra Modi reinforced...

-Hindustan Times India will celebrate the 100th anniversary of its independence without all its children in school, according to a Unesco report. The Global Education Monitoring report of Unesco has said India can achieve universal primary education by 2050, universal lower secondary education by 2060 and universal upper secondary education by 2085. This is a sad commentary because at governmental level India has tried to universalise primary education though the funds...