-The Indian Express This is a record high since 1950 and is almost twice the rate at which the overall population grew. The number of Indians over the age of 60 has hit an all-time high, accounting for 8.6 per cent of the country’s 121-crore population, according to latest official figures. A report released by the Ministry of Statistics on Thursday said that the number of citizens over the age of 60...

-The Hindu Surveys conducted by activists estimate that there are over 1.2 million manual scavengers in India As numbers become data and move from being just a random rearrangement of 0-9, they speak volumes about peoples, nations, and their objectives. They form the basis of government policies, and have the intrinsic potential to change lives, correct historical wrongs and national trajectories. The last election results, we were told, were a message from ‘Aspirational...

-Huffington Post Of all the arguments that have been raised this turbulent spring in our country, one stands out as egregiously vulgar. It evokes in me the moral equivalent of the middle-ear reflex to high intensity sounds, which has a special place in the hierarchy of unpleasant sensations. It's the tax nationalism argument. In essence, it's this: How dare students benefitting from subsidized education funded by OUR tax money hold opinions that...

-The Indian Express The budget recognises the crisis in rural India, but allocations do not match the talk In India now, there appears to be an inverse relationship between the time finance ministers spend talking about a particular issue in their budget speeches and the amount of money they actually allocate to deal with it. This was true of former Finance Minister P. Chidambaram’s budget speeches, but incumbent FM Arun Jaitley...

-FirstPost.com Preparation of budgets is traditionally an incremental process: the first railway budget of the present government took off from the landscape sketched in the 12th Five Year Plan. Expansion, modernisation and development of railway infrastructure were to be given thrust through 3Ps: Public-Private Partnerships. Budget 2016-17, however, promises a new horizon on two fronts: overcoming challenges through 3Rs: Reorganising, Restructuring and Rejuvenating Indian Railways, and introducing pillars of strategy, including zero-based...