-The Hindu   Channai: The population grew by 97.4 lakh persons, including 47.4 lakh males and over 50 lakh females, between 2001 and 2011. A rapidly urbanising Tamil Nadu faces significant social and economic challenges, going by indicators in the 2011 census abstract report released here on Friday. The ratio of rural to urban population has nearly reached parity and stands, in percentage terms, at 51.6 in villages and 48.4 in cities. Tamil Nadu's...

-The Times of India So much has already been written on the food security Bill that there would seem to be no justification for another column on it. Yet, a recent look at some consumption data has convinced me otherwise. How the food security Bill impacts people's lives ultimately depends on the effect it will have on the consumption basket of the beneficiaries. If you believe in serious analysis over flag waving,...

-The Telegraph Howrah/ Calcutta: Union minister Jairam Ramesh today hit back at Mamata Banerjee for daring the Centre to impose Article 356 in Bengal and termed her government a "circus". "I don't think the Centre is so irresponsible. (It) goes by the Constitution. I don't think Article 356 is applied because a chief minister dares the Centre to do so," the rural development minister, who had earlier met governor M.K. Narayanan, said...

-The Hindu Aruna Roy's decision to terminate her relationship with the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council has returned the spotlight to the ideological divide within the ruling establishment on welfare spending. As the civil rights activist noted in her letter to the Congress president, the rupture came over the Manmohan Singh government's refusal to pay statutory minimum wages to workers under the Mahatma Gandhi National rural Employment Guarantee Act -...

-The Hindu   With her passing, Indian feminism has lost one of its earliest icons Three years ago, almost to the day, when we launched Vina Mazumdar's memoir, Memories of a Rolling Stone, the room at the Habitat Centre in Delhi was packed to overflowing. Resplendent in her beautiful silk, Vinadi, as she was known to everyone around her, smiled her way through the evening as bureaucrats, academics, politicians, educationists, feminists and others...