-The Hindu ‘In a democracy, such bias towards select papers is shocking' In a strongly-worded letter to West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, the Congress on Sunday demanded the immediate withdrawal of the circular restricting the purchase of newspapers by State libraries and those it aids and sponsors to ones specified by it. “Undemocratic” Protesting the move, which he described as “most partial and undemocratic,” West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee president Pradip Bhattacharya said...

The great poverty debate has been re-ignited, pitting liberal, pro-market economists against left-of-centre economists of the JNU genre. Is the Tendulkar Committee's poverty line - expenditure of 32 a day in urban areas and 26 in rural areas -an affront to the poor, an estimate that could only have been made by a committee whose members had never known a day's poverty themselves? Or is it a realistic estimate of what...

Swaminathan Anklesaria Aiyar (TOI March 25 and ET March 28) has strongly defended the Planning Commission's stance that there is nothing amiss with the poverty line drawn at Rs 22.40 in rural areas and Rs 28.65 in urban areas (down from initial estimates of Rs 32 and Rs 26, respectively). Let us discount the copious tears being shed by various politicians and their parties on this new line of poverty...

-The Times of India   Health services in the state are likely to get a new fillip with 388 regular doctors being appointed and posted in rural parts of the state. Appointment letters were handed over to the doctors by chief minister Arjun Munda at a function organized by state health department and Jharkhand Rural Health Mission (JRHMS) at the Reproductive and Child Health Centre, Namkum on Thursday. Handing over the appointment letters...

-The Times of India It was UPA 1's winning mantra. But the Rs 33,000 crore a year rural job guarantee scheme may be floundering with the government admitting the flagship programme suffers from delayed payments, poor awareness, lack of durable assets, faulty job cards and muster rolls. The finance ministry has echoed some of the major criticisms of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act listing endemic "lack of awareness about...