-The Hindu Selected youth will work in LEW-affected districts Union Minister for Rural Development Jairam Ramesh launched the Prime Minister's Rural Development Fellowship (PMRDF) programme here on Saturday. Under the programme, 156 youth selected for the fellowship would work in 78 Left-wing extremism (LWE)-affected districts covered in the integrated action plan (IAP) in nine States – Bihar, Orissa, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Jharkhand for two years. Speaking...

-The Economic Times   What's common between foggy movements of two army battalions, the government auditor's assessments of large notional losses to the exchequer and a letter from the army chief to the PM on his unit's preparedness for war?  The information in each of these instances in the past six months was marked 'secret' in official files, but screamed its way to the public, forcing the government into damage-control mode.  Information leaks in...

The announcement of an anti-Naxal tribal battalion in Gadchiroli by Maharashtra home minister is little more than a knee-jerk reaction THREE DAYS after a bus carrying 40 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel was blown up by Naxals in Gadchiroli, Maharashtra, the state home minister announced the setting up of a new anti-Naxal tribal force — a “tribal battalion” recruited by the state reserve police force. Is this new force Maharashtra’s...

-The Wall Street Journal These days, Indian policymakers are debating how to create a vast new food entitlement program. There is talk of poor households struggling to cope with high food prices and malnourishment among their children. What you don’t hear much about, however, is the most tragic and outrageous consequence of India’s failure to feed its people adequately: starvation deaths. India is a nation that prides itself on having been self-sufficient in...

-The Business Standard Rising per capita income and growth have reduced poverty among all classes, including socially-disadvantaged classes. Though there are skeptics who argue that growth has bypassed the socially disadvantaged classes, the analysis of National Sample Survey (NSS) data proves otherwise. But, high prevalence of poverty in the states where more SC, ST populations are living still remains same. A Columbia University, USA, study that had analysed the NSS figures from...