The Government of India's crèche scheme, now renamed as Palna, needs revised guidelines and procedures. This analysis questions its sustainability and highlights the need for clearer details on…
Food canteens in cities offer affordable meals to many, especially marginalised groups without cooking facilities such as migrant workers. By enhancing menus, infrastructure, and staff wages, state…
This student-friendly book admirably accomplishes its task of helping the reader understand economic policy changes in India since 1947. It suggests reforms helped the urban rich, but it does not…
Citizens denied the benefits of growth are compensated with direct transfers in the new welfarism that has yielded electoral returns. This 'techno-patrimonialism' is not based on the poor…
A new study of Patrick Geddes’ work in in India underlines the urban planner’s continued relevance to contemporary issues. But we have to ask ourselves why Geddes’s ideas have failed to gain traction…
In a democracy, should a central bank be autonomous or accountable? A middle ground and a balance has to be struck, The mix will depend on the legal system, traditions, and macro-economic context. In…
Though the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana has outperformed previous central housing schemes, the performance of individual components has varied. The slum redevelopment scheme has performed poorly and…
India’s unsatisfactory public services are embedded in the very structure and functioning of an outdated field administration. Centralisation, a fragmented administrative structure, inadequate…
The government lost an opportunity to dampen the second wave but it should at least protect us from the third wave. For that it needs to revise its ‘liberalised’ vaccine policy, which with its array…
