Op-Eds

India’s expenditure on health budget is a smaller share of the GDP than assured. Budget 2023-24 can be seen as the first Union budget since the recovery from the pandemic, in which the health sector did not receive much focus, unlike the previous two years. We can note a marginal reduction in the share of...   Read More

The decline in AYUSH medicine adoption was prevalent in most states and Union territories. It was constant across all economic groups. The recognition of 21 June as the International Day of Yoga by the United Nations has significantly elevated the relevance of AYUSH systems, which encompass Ayurveda, yoga and naturopathy, Unani, Siddha, and homoeopathy. With...   Read More

By valorising women’s diverse activities, we may treat their vulnerabilities as strengths and fail to acknowledge the lack of access to income-generating activities for women The 2022-23 Economic Survey (ES) should be credited for acknowledging that official statistics may have inadequately captured the true nature of women’s work in India. This inadequacy affects both how...   Read More

The viability of long-gestation transport projects hinges on rightly projecting future revenue flows. Big Data can help in this. The successive Budgets of the NDA government have emphasised on increased investments to upgrade infrastructure. This is a thrust area in Budget 2023 as well. Roads, transport and the Railways continue to remain in focus, with...   Read More

NCAER Professor and Director of the National Data Innovation Centre (NDIC) at NCAER, Sonalde Desai, who holds a joint appointment as a Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland College Park, has been named as a Fellow by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). In a tradition dating back to 1874,...   Read More

The 2023-24 Union Budget focuses on domestic consumption as the main engine of growth, followed by public investment as the second, albeit smaller, growth engine. Significantly, it has not equally supported private investment or exports as accelerators of economic growth or generators of employment. The Government’s enthusiastic support to domestic demand is both reasonable and...   Read More

The Economic Survey for 2022-23 has presented the customary wealth of information and data pertaining to the Indian economy. It has provided the growth projections for the current year and next year, as well as a medium-term outlook. Simultaneously, it has also further articulated the rationale for those projections and outlooks. All these outputs are...   Read More

The sinking of Joshimath or Jyotirmath raises a serious alarm on the sustainability of economic activities, particularly of tourism in various sensitive but highly revered parts of the country. The town has now been declared as a landslide and subsidence-hit zone as well as not suitable for habitation. While it is located in a seismic...   Read More

The global environment seems to have turned less hostile as inflation rates have peaked in advanced economies and oil prices have stabilised at lower levels. So capital flows have started returning to India, the exchange rate is bouncing back and foreign reserves are being rebuilt. Year 2022 turned out to be a rocky one for...   Read More

India needs to adopt a cautious and informed approach to launching a full-fledged digital currency as the prevalent infrastructure may limit its potential benefits. Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced a commitment to issue a digital rupee in her Budget speech delivered on February 1, 2022. Although in the subsequent months, the RBI provided only limited...   Read More