Vivek's Commentary

 In this session, I am trying to analyze the ordinal: The Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Ordinance, 2020 passed by Lok Sabha on 17th September and passed by Rajyasabh on 20th September. What are the key issues related to this ordinal? Let's discuss this.  1) The definition of Farmers discussed in the ordinal: Ordinal defines farmer as  Where NSS 70th round defines agriculture household as :  An agricultural household for this survey was defined as a household receiving some value of produce more than Rs.3000/- from agricultural activities (e.g., cultivation of field crops, horticultural crops, fodder crops, plantation, animal husbandry, poultry, fishery, piggery, bee-keeping, vermiculture, sericulture etc.) and having at least one member selfemployed in agriculture either in the principal status or in subsidiary status during last 365 days.  In 59th round definition was:  ‘Situation Assessment Survey...

Finally, after 34 years, India got a new national education policy. The 484 pages long draft reduced to 66 pages long educational policy. It's always good to have a policy, have a vision regarding education. Let's hope that this vision will be reflected in fiscal policies and budgetary allocation.  The National Education Policy 2020 does include the points discussed in the World Development Report 2018 (Learning to realize education’s promise  https://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/wdr2018  ). The students are attending the school but not "learning". The world development report blames the learning crisis for high inequality, poor outcomes, and political inefficiency. The report suggests school management, unkilled teacher, unprepared learners as well as school inputs are the reasons behind the learning crisis where key players like political players don't give attention to the students learning.  The WDR suggests that countries should work on three parts: Asses...

जाळणाऱ्या आणि जळणाऱ्या कातडीचा  हा खेळ, थांबला पाहिजे वस्त्या जळत राहायच्या आम्ही पावसाची वाट बघायचो डोक्यात दगड पडायची आम्ही वेदना पचवायचो काळ्या पांढऱ्या हिरव्या लाल सगळ्या uniform ला सलाम ठोकायचो... We the people आणि my Lord  मधला हा खेळ, थांबला पाहिजे... लोकांसाठी लोकांनी बनवलेल्या व्यवस्थेत  आजकाल मत मोजतात, मत विचारत नाहीत... मतमोजणीचा  हा असला खेळ थांबला पाहिजे... अपूर्ण

There are a few doubts correction in the billing method proposed by the Maharashtra State Electricity Board (MSEB).  The above picture shows that for 14-March to 14-April and from 15-April to 14-May, the billing amount is charged on the basis of average consumption as during lockdown it was not possible to take the reading. So last reading was "written on the bill" is 14-March and then the current reading is 13-June.  So the unit consumed is taken for period-> 14-March to 13-June (91 days). So the billing period (weight) is 91/30=3.03. And charges per unit for the slabs are increased from 31st March therefore for 17 days of March, the bill is charged on the basis of previous charges and then next days are charged on the basis of new higher rates. The adjustments are made so that the billing gets absorbed in lower slabs. So there is no issue of getting charged in the higher slab with a higher rate. So there is no issue regarding the slabs. But this bill is calculated on the...

COVID-19 some puzzles  This article will be updated regularly...  Puzzle no.1 Lockdown and increasing numbers: The main reason behind lockdown is to isolate the COVID positive people from other populations to avoid possible contact. For that, one should know who is affected and who is not. So testing comes first then tracing and then isolation of the COVID positive people and then Lockdown if required. What will happen if we don’t follow this order? If we lock down the state before testing and tracing, then it will increase the possible contact between COVID positive people and others as no one knows who is positive and who is not. Is that a reason behind the contaminated zone in India? Is that a reason behind the increase in the total number even after lockdown? Data source: World Health Organization COVID-19 Global Data.  The number of confirmed cases is dependent on the number of testing done. As now every state is arguing that we have a high number of COVID-19 because...

Is it a Consumer Confidence, Consumer Expectation and Consumer Sentiments or Voters Confidence, Voters Expectation and Voters Sentiments?  Reserve Bank of India conducts the Consumer Confidence Survey (CCS). RBI conducts this survey in thirteen major cities Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Bhopal, Chennai, Delhi, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mumbai, Patna, and Thiruvananthapuram. The main aim of this survey is to capture the perceptions and expectations of the general economic situation, the employment scenario, the overall price situation, and own income and spending. The last data released by RBI is for November 2019.  Centre For Monitoring Indian Economy Pvt Ltd (CMIE) also tries to analyze the consumer sentiments through Consumer Pyramids Survey (CPHS). This survey is a longitudinal survey. CMIE provides the index for consumer sentiments, index for consumer expectation and index for current economic conditions. The perception about the economic condition (a...

The recent trends in Assembly elections show that the local issues do matter. In this article, I am trying to understand the constituencywise voting pattern for Bihar, Maharashtra, and Kerala in the assembly election. I wanted to compare Bihar and Kerala's last two assembly elections as these states witnessed the state election in consecutive years as well as the differences in the development pattern. I added Maharashtra just for interest ('_').  Bihar in 2010 witnessed the fight between two alliances (actually three NDA, UPA, and RJD+LJP) while in 2015 it was between two major alliances Mahagathabandhana and NDA. The main difference between the two elections is that one happened before the 2014 Loksabha election and another happened after the 2014 Loksabha election.  The concentration index is formed for each constituency by adding the square of vote shares (in total valid votes) of all candidates in a given constituency. Another index is formed by using total number...