Op-Eds

Competing newspaper op-eds by PM’s Economic Advisory Council and two former chief statisticians have led to back and forth about the weakness of our statistical systems and political motivations behind impugning statistics. However, they offer a silver lining by highlighting the importance of statistics for evidence-informed policymaking. Several observations are noteworthy: Indian national statistical systems...   Read More

India was an outlier on fiscal outcomes pre-pandemic, and it drifted further in the high-debt direction during COVID. At their peak in 2020-21, the public debt and fiscal deficit of the General Government (the Centre and the States together) stood at 89 per cent and 13 per cent of GDP, respectively. With the recovery of...   Read More

The Government of India has initiated various national highway projects of significant investment in the Northeast. The highway projects are expected to enhance internal connectivity as well as growth of the States’ economy and create new opportunities for people. The Government’s effort to enhance connectivity in the North-east is visible in many major national highway...   Read More

It is important to consider multiple time zones for India, perhaps starting with two to keep things simple. A green revolution is underway, with green energy, green buildings, green transport, green finance and more. It is time to think of ‘greening the time’ to enable our ambitious climate goals. What does ‘greening the time’ mean?...   Read More

Offering discounts on inflated MRP to lure consumers should be construed as an act of price manipulation. Online marketing or e-marketing has captured the landscape of shopping experience in the country. The ease of online browsing has meant consumers have a variety of choices, get convenient delivery services, return and exchange facilities and not to...   Read More

In the fifth and final article in the Ideas@IPF2023 series, Eichengreen, Gupta and Ahmed reveal how high levels of debt in India limit the resources available for other priorities. At the same time, they predict that there is no immediate crisis of debt sustainability, as institutional factors limit rollover risk, and interest rates have not risen with additional...   Read More

Women’s childhood, adulthood, and old age have all been transformed in India’s demographic journey. The passage of World Population Day (July 11) is also a time to look at how India’s demographic journey has changed the lives of its citizens, particularly its women. India’s population grew from about 340 million at Independence to 1.4 billion....   Read More

Every year, the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) hosts the India Policy Forum (IPF), a platform where economists and policymakers dissect five research ideas for their utility to public policy. To commemorate the 20th anniversary of the conference, Ideas for India launches the Ideas@IPF2023 series, introduced in this anchor by NCAER’s Anupma Mehta....   Read More

An important step on the path to a global macro-financial risk framework. The Bank of England has raised the bar in managing the UK financial system and launched ‘system-wide exploratory scenario exercises’ to understand market behaviour. A more profound grasp of market dynamics will enhance public confidence, with other central banks likely to follow suit....   Read More

Controlling water pollution and protecting water resources in India requires comprehensive collection and monitoring of data. In this article, Pohit and Mehta describe a project undertaken by NCAER and TCD, which used automated sensors attached to boats to collect data on water quality parameters at key points along the Ganga river in Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal....   Read More