-Science.thewire.in * In the near-term, the IPCC report reaffirms that India can no longer afford to ignore the very real developmental challenge that climate change poses at home. * In a significant development, the government’s statement contains a clear and welcome acknowledgement of the relationship between climate change and extreme events. * To embark on a low-carbon development pathway, however, India will need an institutional architecture with a more strategic bent. “It is unequivocal...

In the month of April this year, there has been an unprecedented upsurge in daily new cases and daily new deaths in the country due to Covid-19. States, which reported large increases in daily new cases and daily new deaths, are Maharashtra, Kerala, Karnataka, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh, to name but a few.   Data accessed from https://www.covid19india.org/, which is a crowdsourced platform and an independent aggregator of daily Covid-19 figures and...

-The Hindu The credibility of the RBI, the CSO and the Niti Aayog has taken a beating in recent times due to political interference Nobel laureate Oliver Williamson pondered over an important question, around 25 years ago: “Why are the ambitions of economic development practitioners and reformers so often disappointed?” According to him, “one answer is that development policymakers and reformers are congenital optimists. Another answer is that good plans are regularly...

-The Indian Express Development professionals and policymakers have tried many a scheme to address these issues. One idea that has found resonance in recent times is Farmer Producer Organisations or FPOs. It is well-known that Indian farming is predominantly subsistence-oriented. Over 86% of our farmers operate individual holdings below two hectares, while cultivating 47% of the country’s total cultivated area. The production and productivity of these farms are generally low, and...

-The Hindu The National Health Protection Scheme is disconnected from primary care. It also needs to be scaled up It is unusual for a health programme to become the most prominent feature of a Union Budget. The previous government missed the bus when it failed to implement the recommendations of the High-Level Expert Group on Universal Health Coverage (2011). Yet, those recommendations resonate in the Budget of 2018, with commitment to universal...