-The Economist Growing inequality is one of the biggest social, economic and political challenges of our time. But it is not inevitable, says Zanny Minton Beddoes IN 1889, AT the height of America’s first Gilded Age, George Vanderbilt II, grandson of the original railway magnate, set out to build a country estate in the Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina. He hired the most prominent architect of the time, toured the chateaux...

-The Times of India For the first time in the history of Indian automobiles, cumulative sales of utility vehicles (UVs) have overtaken those of sedans - all three-box cars, from the entry-level to the super-luxury segment - in the first five months of the fiscal year 2012-13. New launches such as the Mahindra XUV500, Maruti's Ertiga and Renault's Duster pulled in buyers still looking to benefit from the huge price differential...

-The Times of India GURGAON: Over 2,000 employees, from top honchos to the workers, posted at the violence-hit Manesar plant of Maruti Suzuki India, will not get their salaries on Wednesday (August 1). Confirming the move, Maruti's chief operating officer (administration), S Y Siddiqui, said: "No one working at the Manesar plant will be given salary. According to the rule, after the company's lockout, workers are not paid till the time it...

-DNA It would be sad if the ghastly violence at Maruti Suzuki’s (MSIL) Manesar plant on July 18, 2012, in which a HR manager died, were to be understood simply as a ‘murderous workers’ vs ‘rational management’ kind of an incident. There is a history and a context to this violence, and how that is understood, and acknowledged, by India Inc. will indicate how serious we are about preventing such incidents...

-The Times of India The bloody and systematic attack on the senior management at Maruti's Manesar plant may have been the result of Naxal influence, according to sources within the government. Intelligence agencies have been asked to investigate whether Maoists are infiltrating trade unions in the Gurgaon-Manesar belt, which has witnessed serious labour trouble in the past few years, added the sources. The agencies are looking at a couple of trade unions...