In The Media ⁽⁴⁰⁰⁾

Read full article Abstract: Much of the media saw in the recent report of the Raghuram Rajan committee one ore opportunity to spar over whether or not Gujarat is a genuine success story. While the reputatin of Gujrat can survive yet one more hollow critique many commentators have seen in it, the report itself requires a critical examination.

Read full article "The road to hell is paved with good intentions," so goes an old saying. unfortunately, we are travelling on that road, oblivious to where it leads. We have put in place vast number of policies with noble intentions, that produce exactly the opposite results. The latest example of this is the Right to Fair Compensation and Tranparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013. The primary objective of the Act is to protect farmers from predation by the government and businesses in the course of land acquisition. But it pushes the protections against acquisitions so far that anyone wishing to acquire land will first look for land on Mars.

The debate between Amartya Sen and Jagdish Bhagwati began with the identification of Bhagwati with growth and Sen with redistribution.Read full article The debate between Amartya Sen and Jagdish Bhagwati began with the identification of Bhagwati with growth and Sen with redistribution. Later, most converged to the view that both sides value both instruments but with different emphases. But this is obfuscation. Taking his latest book An Uncertain Glory, coauthored with Jean Dreze at face value, I accept that Sen recognizes the importance of growth for poverty alleviation. He writes, “Economic growth is indeed important, not for itself, but for what it allows a country to do with the resources that are generated, expanding both individual incomes and the public revenue that can be used to meet social commitments.” Rising incomes and revenues as a consequence of growth were the two themes that Bhagwati had expounded in his 12th Vikram Sarabhai Memorial Lecture delivered 26 years ago. Notwithstanding his claim to the contrary, in his latest book, Sen was far from assigning this role to growth in the fight against poverty.

Read full article Abstract and full text unavailable

Arvind Panagariya says well-nourished Indian children from within India also fail to achieve the WHO norms.Read full article In a recent TV interview, when the anchor asked Amartya Sen how he would respond to economists Arvind Panagariya and Swaminathan Aiyar who had questioned the basis of his estimate of 1,000 deaths per week due to non-implementation of the food security Bill, he prefaced thus, "Panagariya I don't think actually believes there is much undernourishment in the country. He thinks this is a myth - at least this is the headline of his paper." The remark bore no direct relationship to the question posed and was perhaps intended to discredit its source, namely, me. It reminded me of my only encounter with Sen in a TV debate on the food security Bill in which he disparaged me by saying that being resident in New York I wouldn't understand the ground reality of India. Ironically, it didn't dawn on him that he had spent an even larger proportion of his life abroad!