In this week's wrapup, we talk about multidimensional poverty, the coaching centre crackdown, CAT bonds and more.

For the markets edition, we trace the journey of snack maker Prataap Snacks and the rumours of its acquisition by Haldiram’s. You can read it here.

Meanwhile, here’s a recap of what we wrote over the week.

An explainer on Multidimensional Poverty

When you hear poverty, you’re likely to think of the monetary aspect of it. This means that if you know that a person requires ₹x to lead a life with access to food, clothing and shelter  —  the basics, then you can say that a person is poor if they don't have enough money to buy just that. But this doesn't tell you how they are poor.

For instance, a person might have the minimum amount of money to buy food that satisfies their daily calorie intake. But you can also meet your daily calorie intake by consuming stuff like sugar. And that's not nutritious. So you can say that this person is nutritionally poor.

And that's exactly what multidimensional poverty is — trying to classify or identity how a person is poor.

This week the NITI Aayog released a report that suggests that 248 million people have escaped the clutches of multidimensional poverty and that the prevalence of such poverty is falling dramatically. So we wrote explaining multidimensional poverty and why this government report may be causing a stir. You can read it here.

Coaching Centre Crackdown?!

In 2023, there was one student death every two weeks in Kota — the coaching capital of India . And maybe this record-high suicide rate was the final straw. Because the government has decided to do something about it. This week, the Ministry of Education laid down a whole host of new guidelines to bring coaching centres under its thumb. So we wrote a story telling you how we may have got into this mess and why the government may have thought that it was important to regulate these entities. Click here to read it.

The rise of CAT bonds

A couple of days ago, Bloomberg pointed out that 2023 was an exceptional year for CAT bonds in the US. While regular bonds delivered returns of roughly 5%; hedge funds returned 8% on average; and an index made up of these catastrophe bonds was up by nearly 20%!

So on Wednesday we explained what these catastrophe bonds are and why last year was so good for them. You can read the story here.

The ‘1 crore’ solar home dream!

This week the Prime Minister announced an ambitious new scheme  —  the Pradhan Mantri Suryodaya Yojana. He wants to see solar panels on the roofs of 1 crore homes!!! So in Thursday's newsletter we told you all about India’s rooftop solar ambitions and the obstacles in its path. You can read the story here.

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We hope you enjoyed the weekly wrapup. Have a great weekend!

Until then…

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