यह बात अब आधिकारिक सूचना में आ चुकी है कि भारत में गरीबी पहले के अनुमानों से कहीं ज्यादा है। इस माह की 9 तारीख को सौंपी गई सुरेश तेंदुलकर समिति की रिपोर्ट में कहा गया है कि भारत में गरीबी 37 फीसदी(2004-05) है ना कि 28 फीसदी, जैसा कि पहले के आकलनों में माना जाता रहा है।यदि तेंदुलकर समिति के आकलन में खाद्य पदार्थों की कीमतों में हुई मौजूदा बढ़ोतरी को जोड़ दें...

The independence of the judiciary and the rule of law will be severely compromised if the integrity of the higher judiciary is not protected by an independent, informed, transparent, fair and robust process.  The former Chief Justice of India, P.B. Gajendragadkar, said: “Wise judges never forget that the best way to sustain the dignity and status of their office is to deserve respect from the public at large by the...

One-third of India is starving. In fact, this population has been in a state of chronic hunger, a factor which should be taken into account while evaluating the poverty situation, human rights activist and eminent doctor Binayak Sen said in a lecture at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences here on Monday. As a physician, “it’s been my privilege to read the politics of the bodies of my people,” said Dr....

For generations of China watchers, Mira Sinha Bhattacharjea was an objective interpreter of the tumultuous events which unfolded in the Peoples’ Republic.  Mira Sinha Bhattacharjea was one of the world’s leading scholars on China, a political scientist who skirted the minefield that her subject’s often fraught relations with India laid before her peers with integrity, wit and an objectivity of consideration rare in the field of Sinology. Taking to academia at...

In his engaging book on a love affair between a Hyderabadi princess and an Englishman in the 18th century, William Dalrymple reminds us that “the road from Hyderabad to the port of Masulipatam was one of the most beautiful in the Deccan”. In unearthing this fact from travelogues of the time, Dalrymple draws attention not just to the wealth of Hyderabad, inherited from the richest kingdom of the Deccan, Golconda,...