Life imitates art far more than art imitates life – Oscar Wilde In the normal course, it is art that imitates life. The art forms –literature, painting and cinema – for most part depended upon and depicted reality. It was art holding up the mirror to life in the description of pastoral England in the novels of Hardy and Eliot;and… Read more »
A blog post in three parts. Part One: A question. Do women in India require empowerment? This was a question posed to me on a recent trip to Bihar. I said yes. But the answer is actually very simplistic to what we see in the field. This question is attached to a larger group of questions – what is empowerment?… Read more »
Women’s empowerment is an important issue that India needs to deal with on an urgent basis. Women’s position continues to be secondary in the Indian society and the process of change is extremely slow. This is obvious irrespective of what indicator you take and which area you choose: education, health, political and labour market participation, care work or violence against… Read more »
Fiscal Policy measures are a mixed bag There is a sense of relief that the FM resisted the urge to splurge despite low oil prices, and extra money from spectrum auctions, as well as better than expected tax collections in the current year. It is good that fiscal deficit targets have been kept. It will also not add pressure for… Read more »
More than two decades ago, when I made a phone call home using a public booth near Ganga dhaba close to my hostel in JNU, my father casually informed me that the police verification for my passport was over! First I did not understand what he was referring to, as I had not yet applied for the passport. When I… Read more »
While the speculation about the impending Union Budget is rife and the states are busy preparing their own budgets, it is time to take a long term view of budgets, performances and reforms. In Karnataka, this is most opportune moment as Sri S Siddaramaiah, the current Chief Minister of Karnataka, is about to complete 1000 days in office. After assuming… Read more »
Peter Drucker spoke of the bitch goddess growth[i]. Today, this growth is the single minded focus of the Indian Government. To promote this growth, policies are being pursued to encourage investment by the private sector through subsidies and tax breaks. However, for the private sector to succeed in making profits, it needs a trained, healthy labour force. This the government… Read more »
Recently I attended a workshop on Indian Civil Society Organisation’s (CSOs) participation in developmental activities abroad. The meet was to discuss the implications of and the way forward for Indian civil society’s participation in regional and pan-regional development and cooperation activities. A number of reputed organisations who havehad a long history in the development sector were present, along with the… Read more »
Angus Deaton, a professor at Princeton University, has been awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize in economics, for his econometric work in three fields: the estimation of demand systems, the use of microeconomic data is estimating aggregate consumption, especially his innovation of ‘pseudo panels’ based on cross section data, and his use of household consumption survey data in estimating poverty. The… Read more »
In India, teachers have often been blamed for poor performance of government elementary schools. However, for a government school teacher in the 1990s, or even early 2000s, teaching the class and completing the curriculum were not the only challenges. Often, teachers struggled to get physical classrooms or even a single classroom for a particular class. While blackboards and chalks were… Read more »