-The Hindu Its lustre is fading as there are threats from emerging social and environmental risks, but the question is how Kerala has long been recognised to have done many things right. For years the darling of development experts, non-governmental organisations and social activists, the ‘Kerala Model’ seemed to show that impressive levels of human development indicators — in health, education and quality of life, comparable even to some rich countries —...

-The Hindu Business Line The trend signals normalisation of economic activities to pre-Covid levels With economic activities reverting to normal on most fronts, domestic remittances by migrant workers, too, has touched pre-Covid level and in fact is even higher, according to payment players. “Things have got back to normal, we see a lot of activity in the market. People have gone back to jobs and continue to send money. That market continues to...

-The Hindu Disruptions in the supply chain and panic buying can lead to price spikes: Hans Timmer In a report released this month, the World Bank has predicted a ‘dire’ situation for South Asia due to the economic impact of measures to counter the novel coronavirus pandemic, suggesting that the eight SAARC countries (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Maldives and Sri Lanka) will experience their worst economic performance in 40 years,...

-The Indian Express According to the 2011 census, 3.5 million migrants who moved within the last one year stated economic reasons for migration. The corresponding numbers for the 2001 and 1991 census, were, respectively, 2.2 and 1.4 million. The COVID-19 crisis is affecting rural India at a time when agriculture is already in a precarious situation. The thousands of migrant workers who have returned to their villages since the lockdown used to...

In a recent blog post, Columbia University professor Arvind Panagariya mentions that the critics of the present Prime Minister of India failed to underscore ‘employment rate’ -- flip side of unemployment rate -- that stood at nearly 94 percent according to the report on Periodic Labour Force Survey 2017-18. A recent article by Dr. Vikas Rawal and Prachi Bansal, however, points out that in order to understand the problem of joblessness...