Why monsoon-dependent Indian economy needs climate-sensitive budgeting
Unstable coalition govt at the centre may hamper India's growth, warns Arun Jaitley
US-China trade war brings $8.7 billion bonanza for Indian exports to America
Rupee at 79 against dollar: Worsening CAD and FPI outflows from India to trigger further slide
Green Drive: MG motor announces electric vehicle launch in India by 2020
- Polio vaccine contamination: Government needs to fix drugs procurement policy for public health
- Sports merchandising: Technology boost for supply chain and on-demand manufacturing
- Weak rupee, high custom duty trigger 2% fall in vegetable oil imports in September
- Worrying! Capital expenditure is falling; a lot depends on government spending and that could weaken too
- MCA data: 63% of 17.95 lakh registered companies in India active in august
Bibek Debroy
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Public libraries in this day and age; no one has an answer to what they are supposed to do, says Bibek Debroy
In this day and age, we need to think what a public library is supposed to do, its role. The 1954 legislation on public libraries is about the delivery of books and newspapers. Several states have legislation on public libraries, some even recent. But none of them realistically answer how to executively implement this Act
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Section 377, and its mirror-law in England reduced the punishment for gay sex to life imprisonment, from death penalty
When we look at a piece of legislation, we often See it as it is interpreted today, not as it was when enacted. We also assume that the stated objective is the real one.
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Sweet and sour: The bitter truth about honey production
Apiculture is still so informal that and unregulated that there are those who manufacture honey by mixing natural honey with sugar syrup
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Bengaluru pet-lovers are upset at what BBMP has done – Who does not let the dogs out?
The bengaluru municipal authority produced a list of 64 approved breeds for apartments and thus also got into the choice and encouragement of certain breeds
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LIMBS: The right legwork for efficient govt litigation
LIMBS stands for Legal Information Management and Briefing System, and is a ministry of law and justice initiative. The idea is to reduce government litigation—to make government litigation more efficient is a better statement.
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Employment numbers: The jobs debate and working ‘adults’
As of now, GERs are quite high for secondary and senior secondary, much less so for higher education. For secondary education, the threshold of 75% has been crossed, for senior secondary that of 50%.
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Legacy law: Junk the citizen’s arrest law
The second gives credit for this odd piece of legislation to Massachusetts. These days, there are databases to search legislation in many parts of the world. I couldn’t find any such legislation in either Louisiana or Massachusetts. Crime is always defined with reference to a specific piece of legislation.
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Federal Finance: The anatomy of equity
Debate around terms of reference of the 15th Finance Commission ignores the evolution of constitutional mechanisms for devolution of public finance.
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Universal Basic Income: Why talk of UBI when DBT’s here?
Even socialist countries, other than China, haven’t attempted to implement it—not even partially
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Pricing: Diamonds are not forever
Nothing is more useful than water: but it will purchase scarcely anything; scarcely anything can be had in exchange for it. A diamond, on the contrary, has scarcely any use-value; but a very great quantity of other goods may frequently be had in exchange for it.
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Disappearing sparrows: Urbanisation and the flight of the sparrow
Changing construction aesthetics and changing lifestyles in the cities have left the bird bereft of both habitat and ready sources of food
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Labour reforms: Jammu and Kashmir makes a good beginning
Budget 2018: Provisions of the proposed J&K Employment Code are not in public domain. Indeed, the Budget speech suggests it is still work in progress. But there are some clear principles that should drive any such initiative.
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Why doing the accessibility audit requires interest on part of state governments
As the audits of IGI airport and SC show, often, layouts are designed to address the most obvious accessibility concerns, not the less apparent ones.
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Legislation on forests in India have a colonial and complicated legacy: Bibek Debroy
Perhaps it has something to do with the increased popularity of Feng Shui. Many people give gifts of Lucky Bamboo.
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The Old Order Changeth Not: The states have been lethargic in getting rid of old statutes that need to be repealed
The states have been lethargic in getting rid of old statutes that need to be repealed—in fact, in recent years, just seven have moved on this.
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On confusing litigation, Bibek Debroy says ‘you be the judge’
“Even if assumingly no efficacious evidence nor any evidence of cogent worth may stand adduced qua the defendants raising any obstruction upon the suit land yet …
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NCPCR reads forced marriages right, not ILO, says Bibek Debroy
While ILO’s survey questions are a textbook example of how responses should not be elicited, NCPCR offers a nuanced perspective.
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Bibek Debroy on courts’ productivity and case flow management
Research by Vidhi Centre for legal Policy shows framing of case flow management rules is absent for both high courts and subordinate courts in Delhi, Maharashtra, Goa, Manipur, Meghalaya, Odisha and UP .
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Ease of doing business: India’s 30 spot jump remarkable, churlish to deny credit, says Bibek Debroy
Despite improvements, if one looks at scores, relatively weak areas are dealing with construction permits, registering property, enforcing contracts and resolving insolvency.
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Simplistic to link DeMo and job losses
Linking job losses to demonetisation is trivialising the serious issue of unemployment by confusing correlation with causation.
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When cooks get higher salaries than engineers: Bibek Debroy explains state of education
We have been repeatedly warned against blindly believing everything we read or are forwarded. With that dash of sodium chloride, here is the gist of a message I was forwarded, not as a prospective job applicant, since I possess qualifications for neither.
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English vs vernacular: India seems to be producing students not comfortable with either
While PISA 2009, in which India participated, and its methodology have been debated, in both English and vernacular, Indian students’ performance was sub-par. This is partly because of generic frailties in education delivery.
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Bibek Debroy speaks up in defence of Thomas Macaulay, slams droll trolls; here is what he has to say
There can be a debate on teaching English versus the vernacular, though the postulated trade-off may be non-existent.
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Litigation policy: Out on several limbs, says Bibek Debroy
As of June 2017, in LIMBS database, there are 1,35,060 government cases pending, with 369 contempt cases. The Railways has the most and the Panchayati Raj the least
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Foreigner Indian Service: Let OCIs take the UPSC exam too
A recent government decision has the potential to blur the difference between public and private recruitment.
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Tea is turning into a bitter brew; Bibek Debroy explains
Estate factories that use their own leaf for processing run losses. Cultivation, as opposed to manufacturing, by organised tea estates will probably die out. Note that today, estates are rarely able to meet their obligations under the Plantations Labour Act.
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Autonomous bodies review: Part of resentment about panel is because of questions on transparency
Joseph Nye coined the expression “soft power” a bit later, in 1990. Several AB-s are supposed to provide content that can feed into India’s soft power aspirations. Perhaps that’s the reason why, until recently, they constantly faced soft budget constraints.
