Opinion

Devinder Sharma The year was 2006. There was excitement in the air. Throwing out the Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) Act, Bihar had undertaken futuristic agricultural market reforms. With no mandis coming in the way, sarkari economists and policy-makers were exuberant at the immense possibilities...

Melvin Durai When I was growing up, an adult gave me this advice: "Watch where you step. You may step on something unpleasant." This is so true. I got a big shock a couple of months ago when I stepped on a scale. We have...

Prof. Udaya S Mishra and Balakrushna Padhi Based on a population count of 42 million in 2011, Odisha’s population is estimated to reach 44 million in 2021. There after, the growth would slow down to reach 45 million plus in another 15 years. At the...

Jagdish Rattanani In the big cities of India, and less prominently in the smaller towns, private hospitals are now imprinted in the public mind as mercenaries ready for the kill. The signs are everywhere and the collapse is almost complete. These modern-day glitzy edifices which...

Shivaji Sarkar Heading towards a grave scenario, the Indian economy faces contraction in the current and possibly the next financial year. This follows almost a global pattern of pushing a large chunk of people to extreme poverty, $1.90 a day, as part of an estimated...

Saeed Naqvi Pictures of unrelieved despair everywhere on TV and, that too, in the course of an extended house arrest (lockdown), does leave one, to use Faiz’s words, with “pain where the heart once was”. Heaven knows there were problems then too; but in these...

Jayati Ghosh Students in introductory macroeconomics courses typically used to learn about the paradox of thrift. This theory, popularized by John Maynard Keynes, states that if households decide to save more and consume less during a slowdown or recession (because of uncertainty about future income),...

Sudha Devi Nayak All letters are memorials, personal epistles, where we are privy to the thoughts and emotions of the writer; and impersonal, where they celebrate history and culture. Here, we have a selection by the acclaimed historian, Simon Sebag Montefiore, from ancient to modern...

Bharat Jhunjhunwala The national economy is faced with serious odds. The forecasts for GDP growth in the present year range from (+) 1.2 per cent to (-) 11 per cent. UN has forecast (+) 1.2 per cent growth; Bloomberg has forecast (-) 0.4 per cent...

Shivaji Sarkar If wishes were horses, the ‘one India one farm market’ concept would have flown under then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee 20 years ago. This time round, the Narendra Modi government’s move is good, but it’s not going to be easy. The changes...