Frameworks, indices and policy instruments that explain the economic news. 336 concepts, each with its definition, key details and a timeline of every news story that touched it.
India operates a dual-track fertiliser subsidy system: a fixed Maximum Retail Price (MRP) system for urea, and a Nutrient Based Subsidy (NBS) scheme for...
A Non-Banking Financial Company, or NBFC, is a company that does banking-like work, such as giving loans or making investments, but does not hold a banking...
A sovereign credit rating is an independent assessment of a country's ability and willingness to honour its debt obligations, expressed on a standardised...
The Electronics Component Manufacturing Scheme (ECMS) is a Government of India scheme that gives money to companies that make electronic components in...
India's FDI policy classifies inflows into two routes based on sector sensitivity and, since 2020, on the investor's country of origin/beneficial ownership.
The Green Energy Corridor (GEC) is a government programme to build new electricity transmission lines and substations so that power from solar and wind...
India's renewable energy expansion is driven by its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) under the Paris Agreement. India's updated NDC (August 2022)...
'One Health' is a multi-sectoral, transdisciplinary approach recognising that the health of humans, animals, and the environment are interconnected and...
The Electricity Act, 2003 is the main law that governs India's electricity sector (except nuclear power, which has its own law). It covers how electricity...
GOBARdhan is a government programme that turns cattle dung, crop leftovers and other wet waste into useful things: biogas, compressed biogas (a clean fuel)...
India's FDI policy, administered by DPIIT under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry and operationalised through the Foreign Exchange Management Act...
India's ports are divided into two legal groups: major ports and non-major ports. Major ports are controlled by the Union Government. Non-major ports, often...
A Non-Performing Asset (NPA) is a loan that has stopped 'performing', meaning the borrower has stopped paying interest or instalments for a long time. In...
India has experienced a progressive 'feminisation of agriculture' — a growing share of agricultural work being performed by women, partly because male...
Every medicine has one part that actually treats the illness. This part is called the Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient, or API. In a paracetamol tablet, the...
The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade, or DPIIT, is the part of the Government of India that plans how to grow industry and bring...
The Employees' Pension Scheme, or EPS, is a scheme that gives a monthly pension to workers who are members of the EPFO. It is paid after retirement, and...
The Financial Stability and Development Council (FSDC) is India's top forum where the government and all financial regulators sit together to protect the...
Indian Railways has set a target of becoming a 'net-zero carbon emitter' by 2030. This means the railways want to reach a point where the greenhouse gases...
The National Rail Plan, released by the Ministry of Railways, is a long-term vision document aiming to build railway infrastructure capacity by 2030...
The Prime Minister's Employment Generation Programme (PMEGP) is a central government scheme that helps people start their own small business, instead of...
The PLI scheme for large-scale electronics manufacturing was one of the first 13 PLI sectors notified in 2020-21, designed to incentivise domestic...
Pumped storage hydropower is a way to store electricity using water and two reservoirs at different heights. When there is extra electricity, it pumps water...
The repo rate is the interest rate at which the RBI lends short-term funds to commercial banks against government securities under the Liquidity Adjustment...
Systemic risk is the danger that trouble in one part of the financial system spreads and harms the whole system and the wider economy. Macroprudential...
Tokenisation means turning the ownership of a real asset, like a government bond, a share, a bank deposit or a piece of land, into a digital token recorded...
The Hydrocarbon Exploration and Licensing Policy (HELP) is the set of rules under which the Government of India gives companies the right to search for and...
Private corporate investment is the money that private companies spend on building long-lasting assets like factories, machines, power plants, roads and...
A sedimentary basin is a large, low-lying area of the Earth's crust where layers of sand, mud and dead plant and animal matter have piled up over millions...
A captive power plant is a power station that a company or a group of users sets up mainly to meet its own electricity needs. For example, a large aluminium...
The credit-deposit ratio, or CD ratio, tells us how much of the money a bank has received as deposits it has given out as loans. If a bank holds ₹100 in...
A cryptocurrency is a kind of digital money that is not issued by any government or central bank. It exists only as entries in a shared computer record...
When an Indian exporter sells goods or services abroad, the foreign buyer usually pays later, not on the day of shipment. Realisation means actually...
The Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla Rail Link (USBRL) is a 272-km railway line that connects the Kashmir Valley to the rest of India's rail network. Before it...
Insurance distribution means the ways in which insurance reaches the buyer. Most people do not walk into an insurance company's office to buy a policy....
A bridge carries a road or railway across a river, valley or sea. Every bridge must safely carry its own weight plus the weight of vehicles, wind and...
The Pradhan Mantri Matsya Kisan Samridhi Sah-Yojana (PM-MKSSY) is a central government scheme for India's fisheries sector. It helps fishers, fish farmers...
A power exchange is an electronic marketplace where electricity is bought and sold, much like a stock exchange for shares. Sellers (power plants, traders...
V.O. Chidambaranar Port is a major port of India at Thoothukudi (also called Tuticorin) in southern Tamil Nadu. It lies on the Gulf of Mannar, close to the...
The India Semiconductor Mission was established to build a domestic semiconductor manufacturing ecosystem. Under ISM 1.0, the government approved 10...
The IIP is a composite indicator that measures short-term changes in the volume of production in the industrial sector of an economy. In India, it is...
The Southwest (SW) Monsoon is the primary rainfall system of India, responsible for about 70–75% of India's annual precipitation and critical for...
SEBI was established as a non-statutory body in 1988 and given statutory powers through the Securities and Exchange Board of India Act, 1992, which came...
India's labour law framework was overhauled by consolidating 29 central labour laws into four codes: the Code on Wages (2019), the Industrial Relations Code...
The RBI has used special FCNR(B) swap windows before to defend the rupee during periods of capital account stress, most notably in 2013 during the 'Taper...
'Viksit Bharat @2047' is the government's stated vision of India becoming a developed nation by 2047, the centenary year of independence, as elaborated in...
The Aatmanirbhar Bharat initiative in defence, launched in 2020, involves a positive indigenisation list (PIL) — items that cannot be imported and must be...
NCAP is India's flagship programme for improving air quality, launched by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC) in January 2019.
El Niño events are classified by intensity based on sea-surface temperature anomalies in the Niño 3.4 monitoring region (5°N–5°S, 120°W–170°W) averaged over...
The semiconductor industry is structured across distinct stages: chip design (fabless design houses create circuit layouts), fabrication (foundries...
Fiscal deficit is the difference between the government's total expenditure and its total receipts excluding borrowings. It represents the net borrowing...
The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, enacted in 2005, was the first Indian law to convert the 'right to work' into a justiciable...
Launched on February 18, 2016, PMFBY is India's flagship crop insurance scheme replacing the earlier National Agricultural Insurance Scheme (NAIS) and...
India's loss of its 'A' category sovereign rating in the early 1990s is directly tied to the 1991 Balance of Payments (BoP) crisis, when foreign exchange...
The Index of Core Industries is a monthly production index released by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry (DPIIT). It tracks output in eight...
India is the world's largest milk producer, accounting for approximately 22–24% of global milk output. This position was achieved through Operation Flood...
The Indian government maintains a comprehensive fertilizer subsidy regime to ensure affordable access to agricultural inputs for farmers. For urea — the...
The National Policy on Biofuels, 2018 was notified by the Government to promote use of biofuels in the energy and transportation sector. Its original...
Payments banks are a differentiated category of banks introduced by the Reserve Bank of India based on the recommendations of the Committee on Comprehensive...
Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) occurs when bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites evolve to resist medicines, making infections harder to treat. AMR is...