Devangee Halder

The Indian Express • 12th July 2023

Cutting down on tomatoes, going easy on chillis: How Pune is confronting price hike

Sushant Mane has a loyal clientele for the samosas and vada pav that he sells from a ‘thela’ (hand cart) in Model Colony in Pune. But there is a change in his offerings of late. “I used to give two fried chillies with each plate of vada pav but, now, I give one. If my customers ask for extra chillies, I have to refuse. I tell them that I have to keep chillies for later. As a substitute, I offer the extra spicy hot ‘gunpowder’,” he says.

Sahil Pawar, a 21-year-old from Baner, feels the pinch eve

The Indian Express • 17th June 2023

In Pune’s Sadashiv Peth, old-world eateries resist change, bear testimony to simpler times

On a table, under a framed picture of a cherry-topped sundae, are four ripe Alphonsos, packets of sugar and containers of milk. Before the end of the day, a family that lives near Mandai in Pune will enjoy fresh mango ice cream whose taste is one that commercial brands can only aspire to. This is Raja Ices in Sadashiv Peth, one of the few shops in the city where a person can take ingredients for ice cream and bring home a finished dessert.

Raja Ices was started in 1947 by an engineer, Manohar L

10th December 2023

@IndiaSpend on X

Indiaspend • 17th November 2021

Covid-19 Vaccination: Is India Beginning To See The Effects Of Waning Immunity?

Chennai: A recent increase in the share of the elderly in deaths from Covid-19 in three Indian locations for which data are available could be the starting point for a conversation around the possibility of waning immunity and the resulting need for vaccine booster shots, an IndiaSpend investigation shows.


Data on deaths from Covid-19 by age available for Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Mumbai show that the share of those aged 60 years and above in total Covid-19 deaths declined sharply from April 202

mint • 20th October 2021

The scourge of mental illness among prisoners on death row

Over 60% of prisoners on death row interviewed for a major study were found to be suffering from a mental illness, and the longer they spent awaiting their possible execution, the worse their mental health was likely to be.

India’s death row prisoners often belong to marginalized communities, and are highly likely to have a past marked by neglect, violence and adverse family circumstances, found ‘Deathworthy’, a study focused on the mental health of such inmates. The study, led by Maitreyi Misr

mint • 6th September 2021

How school closures have hurt our less fortunate students more

With most Indian schools shut for the past year and a half, children from poor households, particularly those from marginalized backgrounds, are rapidly forgetting what they had learned before the pandemic, new survey data suggests.

Less than a quarter children from low-income urban families, and just 8% among rural ones, were studying online regularly as of August, show findings published Monday by a team of researchers led by economists Nirali Bakhla, Jean Dreze, Vipul Paikra and Reetika Kher

Indiaspend • 6th September 2021

20 Months In, Gaps Persist In India's Official Covid-19 Data

Chennai: A year and a half into the pandemic, and two months before India's only national-level source of disaggregated Covid-19 data ceases operations, India's official Covid data remain wanting.


A team of researchers in a new estimate that by early June 2021, age and gender distribution was available for just one in five reported Covid-19 cases and deaths, and distribution for less than one in three reported deaths in India. and , doctoral candidates at the Stanford Institute for Computatio

The Bridge Chronicle • 3rd February 2021

Budget 2021: A knight or a trickster in shining armour?

This year has been particularly problematic for the world economies, and India is no exception to that. For the said reason alone, the citizens and various industries had a lot of expectations and a fair amount of trepidation from this year’s Union budget - especially when it came to taxation.

February 1 brought in a huge sigh of relief on that account, when it became clear that the Finance Minister hadn’t proposed any major change in India’s direct tax regime (since whenever there is a change

BSc@GIPE • 15th January 2022

Ender’s Game

“Peter, you’re twelve years old. I’m ten. They have a word for people our age. They call us children and they treat us like mice.”

36 years today, Orson Scott Card’s military science fiction Ender’s Game was published, and there are few today who wouldn’t mention it in a conversation about English sci-fi. I wouldn’t go as far as saying it is the best piece of sci-fi I have ever read, but it is remarkable.

The premise of the book is the cause of every war in one sentence—old men instigated war,

BSc@GIPE • 30th October 2021

Prologue of the Future

I read Margaret MacMillan’s The War the Ended Peace not too long ago. If you were to ask me, the book is an excellent collection of evidence to prove one very simple statement- a statement that should be the first, the most potent one in times of crisis.

Peace is always an option. History stands witness that it’s the first option to be abandoned, but it’s the option that fights to preserve humanity, instead of bathing in grotesque victory over a bed of meaningless deaths.

Books, stories and wo

BSc@GIPE • 30th July 2021

The War that Ended Peace

“One night as the two men sat in a café in Paris, Jaurès described what a future war would be like: “the cannon-fire and the bombs; entire nations decimated; millions of soldiers strewn in mud and blood; millions of corpses …” During a battle on the Western Front some years later, a friend asked Gérard why he was staring into space. “I feel as though all this is familiar to me,” Gérard replied. “Jaurès prophesied this hell, this total annihilation.

What is war? Oxford calls it “ a situation in

BSc@GIPE • 30th July 2021

White Nights

Our narrator is a clerk to pay his bills, and a dreamer by vocation. He finds solace in self imposed solitude, roaming the streets of St. Petersburg well into the night. One night, he comes across Nastenka, a distraught stranger by the river, in imminent danger of a drunkard. With a novel bravery, he comes to her rescue, giving in to the beginnings of a friendship. He makes a timid but stubborn request to see her again. Nastenka is reluctant, but gives in on account of her loneliness, and insist

BSc@GIPE • 31st May 2021

Dichotomy

Society, not government. In our country, our society is of the people, for the people and by the people. Not the ‘democratically’ elected government.

India was well and truly entrapped in the second wave of this awful pandemic in mid-February. Many of us—at least among the people I know—didn’t particularly think a second surge would be surprising. To many, a drop in cases was synonymous to the virus being gone. Obviously, this wasn’t the case. With the lapse in Covid protocols, some of us, incl

BSc@GIPE • 31st March 2021

A privilege that shouldn't be

If I asked what an ideal, perfect world would look like, people might say no climate change, zero terrorism, capable and fair governments, and in my world, a lake of coffee at my disposal. I like to believe (perhaps naively so), that most of us would also say equality for everyone, regardless of the race they belong to, the god they pray to, the people they love, the set of chromosomes they were born with, or the gender that they recognize with. In a perfect world, at least in my definition, non

BSc@GIPE • 31st March 2021

Jay Ho?

The Economic Survey 2020-21, pivoted around the Covid-19 pandemic, like most things in 2020. Volume I of the survey had three of ten chapters dedicated to the impact of the pandemic and the country’s response to it, as well as the healthcare system. While Chapter 1 and Chapter 5 discussed and dealt with India’s policy of short-term losses for long-term gains and public health care, Chapter 9 was all about the apparent brilliant performance of the PM-JAY Ayushman Bharat scheme.

In a nutshell, “J

BSc@GIPE • 28th February 2021

Turn to page three hundred ninety four

Turn to page three hundred ninety four

For us Potterheads who still live in the hope that one fine day an owl will catapult in through the window with the letter from Professor McGonagall, Alan Rickman is almost synonymous with a cold, hard, pale face and black billowing robes that can teach us to bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death. 21st February, 2021, marks the day the legend would have turned 75 years old, and as the day draws to an end, I’m peeling myself off the couch from yet ano

BSc@GIPE • 28th February 2021

The encyclopedia of the people for the people by the people

The encyclopedia of the people for the people by the people

If someone were to walk up to me and tell me that there is a non-profit venture run completely by volunteers that pretty much documents history in real time, while simultaneously trying to document every facet of human knowledge, even the weird parts of it, I would tell them that yes, I know what Wikipedia is. Although Wikipedia’s definition of Wikipedia-



– is a lot less cooler than mine, both definitions missed out on one adjectiv

BSc@GIPE • 30th January 2021

Chains and Contracts

As students of economics, one of the first things we learn about is Adam Smith’s invisible hand as described in The Wealth of Nations. This invisible hand basically states that the best interests of a society are realized through individual self interest and freedom of consumption and production. Now, this hand which is obviously invisible in theory, was also a bit of a mystery to actual economists. For the longest time, microeconomics has tried to study the economic institutions upon which the