KEY TRENDS   • Oxfam India's 2023 India Supplement report on poverty and inequality in India reveals that the gap between the rich and the poor is widening. Following the pandemic in 2019, the bottom 50 per cent of the population have continued to see their wealth chipped away. By 2020, their income share was estimated to have fallen to only 13 per cent of the national income and have less than 3...

Urgent action needed to curb deadly air pollution in South Asia A new report by the World Bank states that Nine out of the world’s 10 cities with the worst air pollution are in South Asia. Ambient air pollution is a public health crisis for South Asia, not only imposing high economic costs but also causing an estimated 2 million premature deaths each year. The health impacts of air pollution range...

A decade ago, this figure was around 40%. This is leading to an increasingly polarised stock market - Marcellus/The Wire The United Payments Interface and the digitisation of business activity in India are one of the several factors driving an exponential surge in the concentration of corporate profitability in India. Improvements in transport infrastructure (e.g., the highway network has doubled over the past decade), the introduction of GST (in 2017) and new...

-Down to Earth Could diversify feedstock basket, help secure long-term sustainability with improved economics  Ethanol-blended petrol is regarded as one of the most acceptable alternative fuel blends for transportation; however, the use of molasses and broken grains for its production raises the question of food vs fuel. Second-generation (2G) bioethanol could help to secure long-term sustainability with improved economics for the Indian biofuel market.   Union Minister of State (Ministry of Science and...

The transport sector is important for the smooth functioning of an economy. The supply chains for various products and by-products (both domestically as well as internationally) can work efficiently only if the transportation of raw materials and inputs, and final goods and commodities takes place without disruption.   Due to economic growth, India’s annual CO2 (i.e., carbon dioxide) emission has expanded from 1.19 billion tonnes in 2005 to 2.44 billion tonnes...