Category Livelihoods, Employment and Well-being

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From Relief to Reform to Resilience: Assessing PM-SVANidhi’s Policy Trajectory

When we speak of successful government initiatives of the past decade, popular missions like the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) usually dominates the conversation. Yet, quietly, another programme has been impacting the lives of the millions of India’s urban street vendors, who sustain the everyday economy of Indian cities.

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Interpreting the Rupee’s Decline: Trade Strategy and Export Incentives

The government's chief economic advisor, V Anantha Nageswaran, says he is not losing sleep over the falling rupee. We wish him long nights of peaceful rest and restoration. While the government and the RBl rest, the rupee will be hard at work, to give some respite to our exporters hit hard by Trumpian tariffs.

Tribal

The Decline of Maoism and Its Impact on Tribal Communities

The Maoists might have been looking after their own interests more than those of the tribal people, and hindering State efforts to extend the scope of governance and development to their habitats, but they also raised a voice of protest against acts of injustice against the tribals.

Air

The Air That Betrayed Me: A Personal Reckoning with Delhi’s Toxicity

November is Lung Cancer Awareness Month. Across the US and Europe, white ribbons mark solidarity with patients, caregivers, advocates and doctors. In India, silence reigns, even though 93 of the world’s 100 most polluted cities are here, and here, lung cancer is rising alarmingly among non-smokers, especially young women.

Nearly one in three lung cancer patients in India today has never smoked, and doctors are seeing women in their late 20s and 30s being diagnosed with advanced disease.

This is not a smoker’s disease anymore — it is a breather’s disease, driven by toxic air and environmental exposures.

Tourism

India–Maldives: Sustainable Tourism Cooperation (2025)

The Republic of Maldives, located on the Indian subcontinent, consists of 1,190 coral islands grouped into 26 natural atolls. Following the Maldives' independence in 1965, India was one of the first countries to recognise and establish diplomatic relations with them. India and the Maldives have had long-standing ethnic, linguistic, cultural, religious, and economic links. Physical proximity, cultural links, and development collaboration have all contributed to the two countries' close, friendly, and diverse relationship.

In Small Island Developing States (SIDS) such as the Maldives, where tourism is the principal source of foreign exchange profits and government revenue, the business is growing.

Airports

How to and How Not to Privatise Airports

Airports are local monopolies, for the most part. Who gets to operate them and on what terms matter to the public at large. Sure, there is a regulator, the Aeronautic Economic Regulatory Authority of India to regulate aeronautical and other charges at any given airport.

Trump

Trump, AI and the Global Growth Test of 2026

Earlier this month, Sam Altman of OpenAI declared Code Red at the company: the latest version of its chatbot was underperforming Google’s latest offering, Gemini 3. That panic had one simple explanation: he believes artificial intelligence (AI) to be yet another technology service in which the winner takes all.

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