-The Hindu Business Line   Over 340 million destitute people live here, mostly in rural areas NEW DELHI: India is home to over 340 million destitute people and is the second poorest country in South Asia after strife-torn Afghanistan, says a poverty estimation study by Oxford University, UK.   Forty per cent of all poor in 49 countries live in India, mostly in rural areas, according to the Multi-Dimensional Poverty Index (MPI) 2014, a tool...

-The United Nations   The global economy is expected to strengthen over the next two years, despite a downgrade of growth prospects for some developing countries and transition economies, and "stubbornly slow" job growth, according to the United Nations World Economic Situation and Prospects 2014 mid-year update launched today in New York. "More than five years after the financial crisis, the world continues to struggle with getting the global economic engine back to...

-Outlook   Fear of torture in custody is widely prevalent among people across the world though respondents in many countries, including India, felt that the practice can sometimes be justified, a survey by Amnesty International (AI) has found. A new global survey by the human rights watchdog covering more than 21,000 people in 21 countries reveals that the fear of custodial torture spans all continents, AI said in a release today. According to AI,...

-The Indian Express   India's rentier capitalism is an inset in the big picture drawn by Thomas Piketty   French economist Thomas Piketty has written a scholarly tome with the humdrum title, Capital in the 21st Century. The book has become an overnight sensation because Piketty documents an inherent tendency for ever-increasing inequality of income and wealth in capitalist economic systems. It is not an accident, he says, that many will be left behind...

-SocialProgressImperative.org The 2014 Social Progress Index reveals striking differences across countries in their social performance, highlights the very different strengths and weaknesses of individual countries, and provides concrete guidance for national policy agendas. The Index is the sum of three dimensions: Basic Human Needs, Foundations of Wellbeing, and Opportunity. Each dimension is made up of four equally weighted individual components scored on an objective scale from 0-100. This scale is determined by...