The Indian government has approved the inclusion of information on caste in the ongoing population census. The controversial decision was taken by a group of ministers, headed by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee. Caste-based parties say the information will help the government target affirmative action benefits better. But critics say caste is the most regressive feature of Indian society; that it is repressive, reinforces hierarchy and breeds inequity. India has been conducting the national census...

Amidst predictions by FAO of a record world cereal production of 2279.5 million tonnes during 2010-2011, the bad news is that drought conditions may bring down Russia's domestic wheat production to 50 million tonnes in the current year from 63.7 million tonnes in 2008-09. Russia has already imposed a temporary ban on wheat exports. This has pushed up international prices of wheat contradicting the prediction of FAO's Food Outlook 2010...

All 12,800 villages of Punjab are set to get all 14 citizen services under one roof from December this year, with the Rs 91-crore prestigious programme of 3017 e-gram at each Panchayat cluster becoming functional. After going through the presentation by Joint Secretary of Ministry of Rural Development and Panchayat DK Jain as well as the experience cited by service providers and multinational IT companies contending for this prestigious job, Deputy...

Underpressure from the states, the central government has agreed to bear a higher burden of the cost of implementing the Right to Education. The Centre’s share of the financial burden will be at 68%, a sharp rise from the sharing pattern of 55:45 in the current year and the proposed 50:50 from 2011-12 . The new sharing pattern has been approved by the Expenditure Finance Committee on Wednesday. The ministry...

While the government is spending thousands of crores of rupees in various welfare programmes, food subsidy and is even planning a food security law for the poor, the rural development ministry said poverty has come down in magnitude. In a written reply to the Rajya Sabha, minister of state for rural development Pradeep Jain said that irrespective of the method used (old or new), the percentage of the population below poverty...