Opinion: Bornali Bhandari and Laxmi Joshi. Small farmers lack access to tools, as the tractor-dominated farm machinery sector suffers from demand, supply constraints India is simply not producing the sort of farm machinery that our small and marginal farmers want or can readily use at a price which appeals to them. Farm machinery comprises equipment... Read More
Opinion: Pallavi Choudhuri Children in households without piped water or LPG have lower learning outcomes. This negative impact is greater when women bear a greater share of the burden of unpaid work compared to men. Inadequate access to safe drinking water and clean cooking fuel leads to serious health concerns. The importance of safe water... Read More
Opinion: Sanjib Pohit Soumi Roy Chowdhury and Supratik Guha Using tech to monitor river water quality real-time will help. India is a home to 4 per cent of the world’s freshwater resources and it ranks among the top 10 water-rich countries of the world. In spite of being home to the major river systems both perennial... Read More
Opinion: K P Krishnan The answer to the question of how to vaccinate a billion Indians is perhaps to be found in basic economics. What is the most important health imperative as well as the most significant economic stimuli for India today? Unarguably it is Covid vaccination. We must remember that the story does not end... Read More
Opinion: Bornali Bhandari Samarth Gupta Ajaya Kumar Sahu and K Subbaraje Urs The East’s low may worsen the regional imbalance as the second Covid wave rages on. The NCAER Business Confidence Index (BCI) a measure of business sentiments fell for two consecutive quarters in 2019-20:Q4 and 2020-21:Q1 on a quarter-on-quarter basis. After the lockdown restrictions were withdrawn... Read More
Opinion: Bornali Bhandari Samarth Gupta Ajaya Kumar Sahu and K Subbaraje Urs The Covid-19 pandemic and associated lockdowns have had a significant adverse impact on jobs and livelihoods. Using 2006-2021 data from a quarterly survey on business sentiments this article examines fluctuations in firms’ hiring of temporary/casual and permanent workers across three major economic events –... Read More
Opinion: K P Krishnan A mechanism to separate Sebi's judicial and executive powers is central to creating a regulator more in tune with the rule of law In 1748 the French philosopher Montesquieu proposed a form of government where powers were not excessively concentrated. The legislature defines what is forbidden in laws. The xecutive administers laws... Read More
Opinion: Charu Jain and Deepak Sanan The NCAER’s second Land Records and Services Index 2021 has found that states and Union territories have made considerable progress in digitising their land records and services over the course of one year despite the Covid-19 pandemic. Bihar and Odisha now offer the facility of a web portal to... Read More
Opinion: Sudipto Mundle Aiming for an absolute fiscal-deficit target rather than a ratio would let counter-cyclical stabilizers kick in automatically India’s second wave of the covid pandemic is advancing at a frightening pace. On the economic policy front a sharp contraction has upended the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management (FRBM) Act. As Arvind Subramanian and Josh... Read More
Opinion: Soumi Roy Chowdhury Abhinav Motheram & Santanu Pramanik Delay in acceptance or refusal of vaccine against Covid-19 despite its availability is a key hindrance in achieving optimal vaccination coverage among populations around the globe. Using data from a Facebook survey – conducted in partnership with University of Maryland and Carnegie Mellon – this article explores... Read More
Opinion: Sanjib Pohit In recent years India has been increasingly focussing on augmenting its capacity of producing electricity from renewable energy. As of November 27 2020 38 per cent of India’s installed electricity generation capacity is from renewable sources — 136 gigawatt (GW) out of 373 GW. To some extent this push is due to... Read More