Odisha village gets pattas after nearly half a century. Land reform programmes get jumpstart They say home is where the heart is, but that’s not always true. Ask Arakhita Pradhan, resident of Chilipoi village in Odisha’s Ganjam district. On a cold evening some 44 years ago, the authorities forcefully shifted him and his neighbours to a place where no civic amenities existed. Reason: the state had built an irrigation dam that...

The government’s draft report on black money — that has been circulated to members of the high level committee on black money for final comments — confirms that details of the HSBC accounts in Geneva have given the country its biggest black money trail. Citing this as an instance where the government has moved fast in tracing the coded account holders, the report states that the receipt resulted in information...

-The Indian Express   Pranab Mukherjee should use his waking hours to signal bold reforms Until a few years ago no one really thought that governments could go bust. But the deepening sovereign debt crises of Europe have now persuaded us that governments can go bust if their debt levels cross a certain danger mark. What is that danger mark remains a matter of research by economists around the world. Some studies have concluded...

-PTI Faced with subdued revenue mop-up and rising fiscal deficit, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee today said he is "losing sleep" over mounting subsidy bill, which may cross Budget estimate by Rs 1 lakh crore in 2011-12. "As Finance Minister when I think of enormity of the subsidies to be provided, I lose my sleep. There is no doubt," said Mukherjee, who is engaged in the process of firming the Budget for 2012-13...

It is getting harder for jobseekers to return to gainful employment and for new entrants to find adequate jobs, says the ILO. THERE is little in the International Labour Organisation's (ILO) annual projection of job growth to cheer about. The year 2012 has been described as a year of stark reality. A third of the global workforce is currently unemployed or poor; that is, 200 million members of the 3.3-billion-strong global...