-Tehelka The National Food Security Act is probably going to undergo many changes before it is presented in Parliament. But everyone seems to agree that it’s time has come Towards the end of January, a few days after Republic Day and a little over a week after the Congress’s conclave in Jaipur, large half-page advertisements appeared in major newspapers: “Celebrating the 63rd year anniversary of our Republic by putting food on everybody’s...

-World Bank Blog The enormity of the global job-creation challenge is underscored in a comprehensive new analysis by the International Finance Corporation, which issued a wide-ranging Jobs Study at a recent IFC forum  on the urgency of the unemployment crisis. More than 200 million people are now unemployed worldwide – with another 1.5 billion people only marginally employed, and with an additional 2 billion working-age adults neither working nor seeking a...

-The Hindu Effective spending, reworking the affiliation system and breaking academic bureaucracy are key to better universities Although Indian higher education suffers from many dysfunctionalities and the system overall is characterised by “pinnacles of excellence in a sea of mediocrity”, it does reasonably well by some international comparisons. Here are a few examples: — India is a global leader in terms of GDP spent by public and private sources on higher education. India...

-The Telegraph Even reformed capitalism cannot give equal opportunity There is a view that the real problem with capitalism is that there is no equality of opportunity under this system. Your entire life gets determined by which class you happen to get born into. If the effect of this ‘happenstance’ could somehow be eliminated, so that everyone enjoyed equality of opportunity, then even though income and Wealth inequalities continued to remain...

-The Business Standard Nobody will believe Finance Ministry data that only 400,000 Indians earn more than Rs 20 lakh a year I had barely finished my lecture in support of Tax on Super Rich, when this gentleman sprang up from the audience and asked me how the finance ministry will define “Super Rich” in India. I managed to answer his question by reminding him that certain issues should be left to the...