Letters to the editor dated Oct 15, 2019

This is with reference to ‘India born MIT prof shares economics Nobel’ (October 15). Congratulations to Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer for winning the Nobel prize for economics.

The real cause of poverty in India is political power. Freebies and subsidies will never allow people to come out of poverty. Governments have believed in feeding the poor instead of empowering them.

The Centre should gradually do away with freebies, subsidies and instead create jobs by improving health, education, infrastructure and farming. It should also ensure that with every step of economic growth and development, jobs are created and people can be lifted from poverty. Let us not forget that India has a large labour force and this has to be taken full advantage of by increasing productivity and development.

Thane

Any research which aims at benefiting people at large and improving quality of life deserves accolades. That Nobel prize for economics has been conferred upon Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Kremer for their experimental approach to alleviate global poverty points to an unequivocal message from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences that research with a focus on pressing concerns of the people would never go unrewarded. Banerjee and Duflo co-founded the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab and popularised randomised controlled trials (RCTs) to examine the impact of policy interventions on individual behaviour through controlled trials. Through RCTs, they examined government interventions in tackling poverty to see what works and what doesn’t in developing countries. In countries like India, a better understanding of the same through tools like RCT to ensure concrete and desirable outcomes cannot be simply overlooked.

Sholavandan

This refers to ‘Women’s welfare: We have a long way to go’ (October 15). I would suggest that working women should empower themselves with the three recently introduced pension schemes. We have to see that the three schemes also cater to women as they too work as farmers, on construction sites and manage businesses.

Further, applying the ‘nudge theory’ by providing ₹3,000 per month for different segments of the unorganised sector — through the PM Shram Yogi Mandhan Pension Yojana for poor women labourers, the PM Karam Yogi Mandhan scheme for women retailers and shopkeepers, and the PM Kisan Pension Yojana for small and marginal women farmers — will go a long way.

Vadodara

Apropos ‘PSBs disburse ₹81,781 cr in nine days: FM’ (October 15). The rapid execution of economic reforms to ease the flow of institutional credit to MSMEs and NBFCs is one of the catalysts to accelerate productive activities, besides growth in employment. The credit being delivered must match with the production of goods and services. The supply of credit that doesn’t match the credit absorption capacity of the users is harmful to the lenders and to the economy as a whole. An excessive supply of credit negatively impacts the quality and gives birth to non-performing assets. The thrust by the government on lenders to speed up disbursements of credit facilities is a business opportunity to lenders, and so the latter must be prudent and diligent in the process of credit creation and delivery to ensure quality rather than achieving the set quantity. Resolution and or recovery of the dues are equally crucial to enhance the margins as well as to augment lending capacity. While the government is monitoring the public sector banks to ensure the achievement of the set targets on lending, it must also ensure that the money advanced is not without compromising lending norms.

Kottayam

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