A PIL in the Supreme Court on Monday made a strong pitch for utilising the Elaborate ‘Census 2011’ mechanism to end the 80 long years of speculation about the exact population of other backward classes (OBC), which had been the basis for 27% reservation in jobs and educational institutions. PIL petitioner Kishore Govind Kanhere through counsel D K Garg said that while the Mandal Commission estimated that OBCs constituted 52%...

Kaushik Basu, the current Chief Economic Adviser to the Ministry of Finance, had a 15-year-long stint as Professor of Economics at Cornell University. The Padma Bhushan awardee has been working closely with the Finance Ministry and the Prime Minister to chart the country’s future growth path. He spoke to MANAV CHOPRA about the need for better monitoring to ensure growth doesn’t happen at the expense of social justice. Excerpts: A common...

People in the southern state of Kerala are the heaviest drinkers in India, and sales of alcohol are rising fast. The BBC's Soutik Biswas examines why. Jacob Varghese says he began drinking when he was nine years old, sipping on his father's unfinished whisky and brandy in glass tumblers. It's a terrifying story of a descent into alcoholism for this 40-year-old health inspector. At school, he consumed cheap local liquor. He...

Many of our politicians would still rather ignore the informal sector and the women who form its backbone. They do so at our peril. India is undergoing enormous change. In a very short time, many Indians have become much richer, and our country is now often described as a “world player” economically and politically. Despite this transformation, our rich history, culture and traditions rightly remain important. Indeed, our success rests...

Overwhelmed by the victory in the passage of the Women's Reservation Bill in the Rajya Sabha, women's groups on Wednesday asked the government to place it in the Lok Sabha at the earliest to sustain the momentum. “We hope that the United Progressive Alliance will do so immediately, and evolve strategies to address the possible obstacles to its smooth passage,” the National Women's Organisations — a collective of several groups —...