Opinion

At the governing council meeting of NITI Aayog earlier this year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi called for district-level GDP estimates to shift economic measurement from top-down national aggregates to decentralised, grassroots assessments. Aggregates are neat headline numbers, but they often hide the messy details underneath....

Recent Reserve Bank of India surveys reveal stagnation in income growth with the net response on current income falling to 0.9 from 3.0 while overall spending sentiment moderated to 74.5 from 78.4. At a time when unemployment and even underemployment has emerged as a crucial...

By Bhabani Shankar Nayak The history of volunteering is as ancient as human society itself. At its core, it rests upon the free goodwill of individuals who offer their time, unpaid labour, ingenuity, and creativity in varied service to people and the planet. Born of...

By Sourajeet Pradhani India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) has been one of the most remarkable public digital infrastructure success stories in the world. From a roadside tea stall to a multinational corporation, UPI has transformed the way Indians transact. It has made digital payments instant,...

By Andrew J. Scott The global demographic transition, characterised by declining birth rates and rising life expectancy, has been one of the most consequential transformations of the past century, with population aging fueling a steady stream of gloomy economic forecasts. If academic economists, international organisations,...

To drape a genuine Sambalpuri saree is to carry a piece of living geography. Originating from the weaving clusters of western Odisha such as Bargarh, Sonepur, and Barpali these textiles are celebrated for their striking geometry and complex Bandha (tie-and-dye Ikat) technique. Artisans pre-dye warp...

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is a large and well spread-out organisation by its own admission. It has today glamorous buildings and well-appointed offices across the country. It has marked its 100th anniversary with a host of celebrations, and a commemorative stamp and a coin...

In a county in northern Virginia, a family’s electricity bill has doubled. A few miles away, a windowless building the size of a shopping mall hums through the night—yet another AI data centre, consuming more power than the town it was built beside. The dispute...

Melvin Durai There’s an old saying that “slow and steady wins the race.” Many people believe that it’s the moral of the fable “The Tortoise and the Hare.” The hare grabbed a big lead in the race, got complacent and took a nap before the...

Kaushik Basu Something strange is happening in the US labour market. The latest data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that the US economy lost 23,000 jobs in July, yet the unemployment rate actually fell to 4.1 per cent. A closer look helps...