Reconciling Growth and Environmental Protection
The environmental impact of infrastructure expansion that will arise from a larger population with rising living standards, rapid urbanisation, growing energy use and water demand will have to be managed by modifying the focus of infrastructure planning and by greater transparency in the decision-making process, says Nitin Desai ...read more 

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Inclusion and growth in India: Bare facts, Revealing Branches
Often in the polemical debate about poverty and policy, and the poverty of policy, the facts become irrelevant. One rather striking finding about the inclusive growth process in India is that real inequality has stayed constant for almost 30 years since 1983. Regarding poverty, a striking finding is that as of 2009-10, the Millennium Development Goal of half the poverty level as in 1990 was achieved a full six years before the 2015 expiry date, writes
Surjit S Bhalla ...read more

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Agriculture : The Land of Lost Opportunities
Indian agriculture plays a unique role in food security, employment creation and poverty alleviation besides providing cheap labor for the industrial and services sectors. Farmers are rapidly becoming impoverished due to price and movement controls. Subsidies attributed to agriculture are misplaced with diesel subsidies, free electricity, and subsidies to fertilizer manufacturers. If farming is so highly subsidised, why are our farmers committing suicide? Are we only paying lip service to developing the agricultural sector, asks K G Karmakar ...read more

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The Great Poverty Debate
Estimates of poverty are highly debated today. How do we measure the ‘other India’ which is still mired in poverty, without access to basic services? It is time we adopted a more humane approach to measuring and tackling poverty in India, and make economic growth truly inclusive, introspects Rajesh Shukla ...read more

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Rethinking NABARD
With economic growth prospects looking disappointing, and poor agricultural growth in 2011-12 at no more than 2.5-2.7 per cent, this is the time to look at the institutional interventions we made during the last few decades, principal among them being NABARD, says Yerram Raju ...read more

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Revive Faith in the Indian Economy
I would really work for the delivery end. Food prices going up was really a question of supply side mismanagement and some blockades in the supply side. So, primary attention has to be to the economy and as soon as the nation picks up its confidence on the economic side then we need to address the other side, i.e., restoration of law and order, says Jaswant Singh ...read more

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Inclusion of Panchayat must for inclusive Growth
Implementation of social sector schemes through institutes of self-governance and push to agriculture sector could usher rapid equitable growth in the country, opines Mani Shankar Aiyar ...read more

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Need for Equal Rights and Privilege for Minorities
As the processes of economic development unfold, pressures are likely to build up and intensify when there is unequal development and some groups or minorities lag behind in the development process. Ideally, development processes should remove or reduce economic and social obstacles to cooperation and mutual respect among all social and ethnic groups in the country, writes Rajinder Sachar...read more

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Overcoming Social Exclusion:  Breaking the cycle  of caste
Breaking the cycle of disadvantage is for those individuals and communities who have spent too long waiting for opportunities to make a contribution and participate in a meaningful way. It is about reaching out to people on the margins and drawing them into full engagement in the economic and social life of our country, says Ruth Manorama ...read more

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Reforms: The Unfinished Agenda
Reforms initiated by Manmohan Singh in 1991 can be classified as first generation reforms. When I took over as finance minister, I found that there was an unfinished agenda of the first generation reforms and there was a need to launch the second generation of economic reforms. So I started to attend to these and tried to complete the first generation of economic reforms, says Yashwant Sinha, Member of Parliament and former Finance Minister ...read more

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Public Office Private Benefits: India’s Corruption Story
C orruption has become integral part of our daily life. Everywhere power is being (mis)used for personal gains and gratification. The more corrupt the state, greater the number of laws. A strong state does not require more laws. It requires laws that are better enforced, writes Laveesh Bhandari ...read more

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Where is the economy headed
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has a conversation between Alice and the Cheshire cat. ‘Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?’ ‘That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,’ said the Cat. ‘I don’t much care where…,’ said Alice. ‘Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,’ said the Cat. ‘…so long as I get somewhere,’ Alice added as an explanation. ‘Oh, you’re sure to do that,’ said the Cat, ‘if you only walk long enough.’ In terms of the economy, are we clear about where we want to go? Or are we just trundling along, as long as we get somewhere? questions Bibek Debroy ...read more

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From a Right to Schooling to a Right to Learning: Rethinking Education Finance
Should elementary education be delivered through the current model that focuses on the expansion of schooling through a top-down, centralised delivery system or we use the Right to Education as an opportunity to alter the current system and create a bottom-up delivery model that builds on an understanding of children’s learning needs and privileges accountability for learning rather than schooling, questions Yamini Aiyar...read more

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Home-grown Green Revolution
Agricultural growth on a year-on-year basis is critical for both food security and inclusiveness of growth. The Eleventh Plan target fell short by 25 per cent and the Twelfth Plan aims not only to attain the target but also cover lost ground. N A Mujumdar debates how to go about achieving this...read more