Author: Ram Manohar

In age of hybrid crops, the importance of preserving landraces

News: Recently, Rahibai Popere, popularly known as Seed mother, from Maharashtra won this year’s Padma awards. It was in recognition of her work that has helped save hundreds of landraces (wild varieties of commonly grown crops at the village level) Contents1 How Landraces are different from commercially grown crops?2 Why preserving landraces is important?3 What… Continue reading In age of hybrid crops, the importance of preserving landraces

How Facebook can be more responsible when it goes local

News: Facebook’s approach to not invest in content moderation in Indian languages should be taken seriously and further scrutinized. Recently, in the backdrop of the leaks by whistleblower Francis Haugen, Facebook admitted that it has hate speech classifiers in only four Hindi, Bengali, Urdu, and Tamil out of India’s 22 scheduled languages. Moreover, its scale… Continue reading How Facebook can be more responsible when it goes local

For inclusive development, support Dalit entrepreneurs

News: Dalit entrepreneurship holds promise for the much-needed social transformation. Many attempts have been made to transform the highly-stratified Indian society into an inclusive one. However, the expected social transformation in our Indian society remains unfulfilled, esp with regard to Dalits. Their situation has improved, but social exclusion still persists. In this context, promoting Dalit… Continue reading For inclusive development, support Dalit entrepreneurs

The high cost of India’s illusive quest for formalization

News: Formalisation of India’s economy has not benefited the informal workforce in India A recently released report by the State Bank of India (SBI) research team has claimed that the informal sector’s share in the overall economy has shrunk from 52% in 2017-18 to 15- 20. While the decline of the informal sector looks like… Continue reading The high cost of India’s illusive quest for formalization

Season of floods: On TN’s long-term solutions to avoid monsoon woes

News: The ongoing spell of heavy rain in Chennai has again exposed its vulnerabilities. It has also raised questions about the Government’s preparedness to deal with the problem of inundation (flooding). Why the problem of flooding is persistent in cities? The crux of the problem is the issue of drainage. The reasons that are responsible… Continue reading Season of floods: On TN’s long-term solutions to avoid monsoon woes

Cleaning Yamuna will require improving sewerage networks, cooperation between Delhi and neighbouring states

News: A layer of froth was seen floating over parts of the Yamuna River in New Delhi. For the past three days, social media has been flooded with visuals of devotees taking a dip in the Yamuna River enveloped by the toxic foam. The formation of froth is a sign of an ecologically-dead river. What… Continue reading Cleaning Yamuna will require improving sewerage networks, cooperation between Delhi and neighbouring states

The case of demonetisation in India

News: Popular narratives play a much bigger role in economic policymaking than economists and policymakers acknowledge. For instance, the Weimar hyperinflation of 1921-24 is deeply embedded in the German consciousness. Even now, nearly 100 years after the event, German society trusts financial stability and distrusts public debt. Fiscal conservatism remains the dominant narrative and has… Continue reading The case of demonetisation in India

Dualism and its discontents

News: Covid has substantially sharpened economic dualism in India. Poverty rates are increasing and government needs to focus on the expansion of job opportunities in both the formal and informal segments India has been characterised by significant economic dualism and disparities over many years. Dualism indiciates co-existence of two different worlds. Economic dualism therefore denotes… Continue reading Dualism and its discontents

Money Is The Key To Happiness

News: Per capita GDP, not GDP itself, is the real measure of national progress GDP does not reflect a society’s well-being. GDP captures neither population decline nor welfare. Moreover, it doesn’t measure social indicators of wellbeing such as the health, education, and welfare of children. In this context, many alternatives have been proposed such as… Continue reading Money Is The Key To Happiness

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