"We live on a day-to-day basis," Suraj says, as the faint sound of hammering echoes across the village. "What we earn is what we spend on our families in a day." In Ganne, just off the main road about an hour south of the city of Allahabad, this is a simple fact of life. It is home to members of a poor tribal community, who live in small huts clustered around...

In India peasantry is under assault. There is a five-pronged attack on this class and the mighty Indian state is sometimes an active and sometimes a passive abettor. The first point of attack is from the corporate sector. The corporate sector is in a land grab mode. Though not justified, one could understand their urge to get land for industry and real estate purposes. Not that they are causing aggressive...

The Karnataka government is getting ready to host the Global Investors Meet (3- 4 June). A similar jamboree held some years ago, when S M Krishna was chief minister, had been a resounding flop, but this one, the government believes, would be a runaway success. There has been no dearth of publicity for the event in the media and there has been no shortage of roadshows on foreign soil. A...

India’s record in providing education to its children has been very poor. Low education levels have an impact on income, productivity, health status and standard of living. As per 2001 Census, the overall literacy rate of India is still only 65.4%, with many states having a literacy rate less than the national average. While the male literacy rate is around 76%, only about 54% females are literate1. What is important...

SINCE THE RELEASE OF THE ECONOMIC Survey, 2010, in February, much has been discussed — but far less debated — on the issue of substituting India’s public distribution system (PDS) with a food coupon-based targeted subsidy programme to benefit the below-poverty-line (BPL) families. As a leading proponent of this programme, the economic adviser to the finance ministry, Kaushik Basu, has gone on record advocating the use of food coupons declaring...