Uncertainty has declined

One year ago, there was radical uncertainty, with a combination of DM macroeconomic uncertainty, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and China’s zero covid policy. DM monetary policy tightened sharply, which pulled global aggregate demand back but induced little explosions in many illiquid and risky corners of the world economy.

In my column in the Business Standard today, I say that Uncertainty has declined, and think about the consequences for firms and individuals.

Measurement of financial inclusion

ESG investors, financial service providers who receive ESG capital, and policy makers: all want to do more for financial inclusion. However, there are important gaps in the measurement of financial inclusion. These weaknesses of measurement creates a greater risk of faulty uses of state power when supposedly fostering financial inclusion as a goal, and concerns about greenwashing in the eyes of global ESG investors.

Indradeep Ghosh and Susan Thomas have a new paper, Financial inclusion measurement: Deepening the evidence, which appeared in the Inclusive Finance India Report 2022 which came out last month. This has important first principles thinking about how to measure financial inclusion.

Basic facts about the health of the people

In the field of health in India, there are important gaps in measurement of the health of the people. The existing government measurement systems measure mortality, poorly, and little else is known about the health of the people.

Ila Patnaik, Renuka Sane, S. V. Subramanian and I have been working with the CMIE CPHS data on self-reported health, where about 700k individuals are asked “Are you feeling healthy today?”, three times a year. This is an important advance in health measurement in India. Last week, our main paper on self-reported health in India was published in PLOS One.

Draft Digital Data Protection Bill, 2022

Ever since the UIDAI system was proposed, there have been concerns about the unchecked ability of the state, to obtain and exploit information about the people. The latest version of a bill to help matters is the draft Digital Data Protection Bill, 2022. Urvashi Aneja, Rishab Bailey, Aman Nair, K Shashidhar, and Karthik Suresh have written an analysis of this draft bill.

Updates

Uncertainty has declined; Measurement of…