ET2019 ⁽¹⁶⁾

What the second Narendra Modi government can do is to put in place employment-friendly policies.Read full article The Narendra Modi government has won a resounding mandate. This soundly puts him and his administration in a position to seriously confront a problem that confronts India. Today, a disproportionately large part of India’s workforce consists of farmers with holdings of less than a hectare, self-employed, and those employed in low-productivity activities in farming or micro enterprises in industry and services. This vast workforce earns near-subsistence level of income or wages. Creation of well-paid jobs for this vast workforce is nearly synonymous with transforming India into a modern economy. As such, no one should make light of the challenge this task poses. Accomplishing it requires interconnected reforms in virtually all areas of the economy.

Read full article On the recommendation of a NITI Aayog Committee, on which the authors were privileged to serve (as chair and as a member), the human resource development (HRD) ministry and the University Grants Commission (UGC) initiated an important reform in higher education in February 2018. Under the reform, colleges receiving scores of 3.51 or higher on a scale of 0 to 4 from the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC), or accredited by the National Accreditation Board (NAB) in three or more programmes with scores of 750 or more in each programme, automatically become eligible for autonomy. The reform also opens the door to autonomy to somewhat lesser performing colleges. But the procedure for it is more elaborate rather than automatic. The experience with the implementation of autonomy, to date, offers an interesting window to the difficulty of reform within the command and control system with multiple power centres that has remained undisturbed in higher education. Without determination and persistence on the part of actors and entities piloting reforms, odds are in favour of the survival of status…

No matter what some Delhi-centric journalists and intellectuals might say, he remains personally intensely popular with people.Read full article I have maintained, since well before the Balakot airstrikes, that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will repeat his 2014 election victory in 2019. This conviction is rooted in many factors. The first factor is Modi himself. No matter what some Delhi-centric journalists and intellectuals might say, he remains personally intensely popular with people. Through regular radio broadcasts, social media interactions, and personal appearances at hundreds of functions and rallies each year, he has successfully conveyed to the average Indian that he is sincere, hardworking and decisive. Many may have specific complaints about unfulfilled promises. But few doubt his unwavering commitment to the nation and its people.

One concern is financial feasibility. NYAY pegs cost at Rs 3.6 tn —13% of govt expenditures in 2019-20 budget.Read full article Congress’ minimum income scheme, Nyuntam Aay Yojana (NYAY), raises several puzzling questions. Congress president Rahul Gandhi stated his party worked on the scheme for six months and consulted ‘all big economists’, including former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan. But, so far, none has satisfactorily answered any of these questions. Normally, a cash transfer scheme offers identified beneficiaries a fixed amount of cash. Once beneficiaries have been identified, you transfer the stipulated sum to them. But NYAY adds a twist to this standard scheme. It additionally guarantees every family a minimum income of Rs 12,000 a month. The first puzzle is whether the scheme would identify all those families with monthly income below Rs 12,000 and uniformly transfer Rs 6,000 a month to them. If yes, then for families with incomes exceeding Rs 6,000, the scheme would overshoot the target income. Why subject the taxpayer to this extra burden? An alternative would be that the scheme would give each identified beneficiary family…

For poorest beneficiaries, the transfers under PM-KISAN make a significant contribution to their purchasing power.Read full article The Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) scheme will transfer annually Rs 6,000 to every small and marginal farmer. Many in the Opposition have criticised the scheme, arguing that it offers too little to be of real help to farmers. Congress president Rahul Gandhi went as far as describing the scheme as “an insult to everything [farmers] stand and work for”. This denunciation is largely political. When in power, the UPA government had put in place a subsidy under the National Food Security Act (NFSA) that was roughly equal to the transfer under PM-KISAN on a per-beneficiary basis. One may rhetorically ask, was this subsidy, too, an insult to its beneficiaries? To those steeped in the elite culture of Lutyens’ Delhi, almost any transfer that is feasible within India’s tight fiscal constraints appears laughably low. We are reminded of the acrimonious debate on the Tendulkar poverty line in 2011. One commentator had argued then that at this poverty line, he could not even buy…