In an interaction with BW’s Rajeev Dubey, Professor S. Mahendra Dev argues why our inclusive growth is far from ‘inclusive’

Both UPA I and UPA II have had identical social objectives: enormously expensive subsidy-laden programmes that began with job guarantee through MGNREGA and have since expanded to free education, food security and now universal healthcare.

CACP’s chairman on why Indian agriculture is trapped in a cycle of mediocre growth and low productivity.

A major roadblock for mining and power generation is gone
Power-generating and coal mining companies can wipe the sweat off their brows. On 20 September, the group of ministers — set up to review former environment minister Jairam Ramesh’s ‘go, no go’ classification for granting coal mining licences — agreed to scrap that decision-making mechanism. That means that all mining proposals will receive fair consideration.

Imported coal prices are up, private power producers want a tariff hike. Will the government blink?

Why Montek Singh Ahluwalia is at the receiving end whenever he puts out any figures on poverty reduction
Suresh Tendulkar died in June last year. But even when he was alive, he was rarely attacked by politicians for his work on calculating poverty. Strangely, the person who ends up getting all the flak for the late economist’s methodology for calculating the poverty line is Montek Singh Ahluwalia, deputy chairman of the Planning Commission.

FM talks about his toughest budget yet, cost of the food security Bill and lots more

Ajit Gulabchand, CMD, HCC talks about balancing environment sustainability with infrastructure growth

We are a rich country, with poor people. We need to bring people out of poverty and bring prosperity. Now while doing that a lot of damage is done to the environment which actually affects everybody. So, how do you manage and protect the environment when you grow?

Speaking to BW, the Union minister of urban development and poverty alleviation, Kamal Nath, points out that the challenge is to clear the backlog

E. Sreedharan spoke to BW on urban transportation and the way forward for a country that is urbanising at a frenetic pace

Two recent bids opened by the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) have revived an age-old debate — do bidders sometimes bid irrational amounts to win the contract? Typically, the winning bidder (often backed by NHAI) argues that it is a case of sour grapes. The argument is that if a bidder has promised a premium or asked for the lowest grant, it is possible that the bidder also has a lower cost of operation for that particular stretch — even if the numbers seem unrealistic to others.