Op-Eds

The likeliest benefit that India will draw from a swap line with the US is the ability to thwart any self-fulfilling speculation against its currency during a sell-off episode. India is unlikely to draw upon the swap line just as it has not drawn upon its existing swap line with Japan. Thus, a swap line...   Read More

Modern international financial problems have been studied intensively since the Asian financial crisis of the 1990s, and there is now a surprising degree of consensus among economists and policymakers. While the G20 may not be able to achieve much in a divided world, there is a well-defined and viable agenda it should pursue. BERKELEY/NEW DELHI...   Read More

NCAER Professor and Director of the National Data Innovation Centre at NCAER, Sonalde Desai, who holds a joint appointment as Distinguished University Professor at University of Maryland, has been appointed to a consensus study panel on “Women’s Empowerment, Population Dynamics, and Socioeconomic Development” of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, the collective national academies...   Read More

Policies to encourage vocational education among youth, including NEP-2020, can gradually, effectively and schematically address the limitations in implementing them. The emphasis on inculcating vocational education among students at school level has been there  since more than three decades when India’s second National Policy of Education was put into  effect in 1986. The NPE-1986 stated...   Read More

As India took over the G20 Presidency from Indonesia, the Government of India constituted task forces to address well-defined global problems in order to support G20 policymakers, and to aid business and civil society organisations in complementing the G20 policy efforts. The NCAER Director General Dr Poonam Gupta was selected as the Chair of the...   Read More

Population growth and the changing geographic and generational balance of power The United Nations estimates that the world population will reach 8 billion on November 15, 2022. Our minds had barely wrapped around a global population of 7 billion in 2011, and now, only 12 years later, we are looking at a population of 8...   Read More

Exposure to nanoparticles, arising from both natural and man-made processes, can cause cardio and pulmonary problems Another winter and the discourse invariably turns towards air pollution in Indian metros, with a focus on Delhi. Increasingly, we come across studies that estimate the number of Indians who would die early due to air pollution, or have...   Read More

Global Hunger Index is riddled with inadequate and poorly described data and a lack of conceptual clarity. The problem with indices of this type is that it directs governmental attention to cross-national comparisons, sometimes resulting in the rejection of underlying issues and sidetracking the public discourse The world seems to have gone index-happy. Happiness Index,...   Read More

The oft-cited 14% of GDP is an overestimate, arrived at by a consulting £rm using a model built for developed countries. India’s logistics cost is estimated to be around 14 per cent of GDP — a figure that has all of a sudden become cast in stone. High logistics cost, without doubt, impinges on competitiveness....   Read More

Earlier this year, the United Nations published data to show that India would surpass China as the world’s most populous country by 2023. According to the 2018-19 Economic Survey, India’s demographic dividend will peak around 2041, when the share of the working age population is expected to hit 59%. In this context, does India need...   Read More