Rajesh Kumar: “One area that needs significant intervention and will have a large multiplier effect is the judiciary. India has over 50 million pending cases. There is often talk of fast-track courts for certain matters. But with such a level of capacity constraint, fast-tracking anything will put the rest of the system on a slower track. Capacity constraints and delays in courts create serious disincentives for investments and encourage misuse of power by bureaucracy. Swift delivery of justice will improve the investment climate, increase growth potential, and enhance the overall quality of development. In sum, while the idea of improving state capacity is not new, it is time to make a fresh beginning.”
Tavleen Singh: “If the downtrodden vanished into the middle classes, then how would politicians be able to wander about at election time promising people freebies like monthly pocket money for women and apprenticeships for the unemployed? Instead of freebies what the poor need are the tools to lift themselves out of poverty like good schools and institutions that teach people the skills that would make them employable. But if this happens then how will politicians lure voters by promising them more and more government jobs?”
Economist: “Women-only or women-majority factories can create a virtuous cycle, says Josh Foulger of Zetwerk, a contract manufacturer, who set up several in Tamil Nadu and neighbouring Andhra Pradesh for previous employers. “Many of our workers referred their friends and neighbours,” he says. Once people from the surrounding areas realised that the jobs were safe and decently paid, the objections died down. Other problems were trickier to solve. “We used to have men lurking outside the factory gates and chase the buses transporting women workers.” A heavier security presence eventually put paid to the lurkers…. Since the pandemic Indian women’s participation in the labour market has begun to grow again, after declining for nearly two decades.”
The Generalist: “Over the next decade, intelligent, embodied androids will permeate industrial activities and aspects of everyday life, from assembling cars to folding laundry. The impending robot “population boom” is the result of technological breakthroughs, intense investor appetite, labor cost arbitrage, and long-standing demographic trends.”
WSJ: “The standard ways of measuring economic growth don’t capture what life is like for real people. A new metric offers a better alternative, especially for seeing disparities across the country…We created a new metric: the CORE Score, a multipart measure of well-being. The central goal of the economic system, as one tribal services leader in Alaska put it, should be to improve “the wealth of our lifestyle, the wealth of how we live.” Economic growth is important—vital even—for enabling a better future. But it is important to know who is benefiting from that growth and whose lives are being improved…The CORE Score is broken down into four central elements: economic security, economic opportunity, health and political voice.”
