-The Hindu Thanks to the caste system, India has always been an unequal society. What is even more worrying is that inequality appears to have deepened in the past two decades The Boston Consulting Group’s 15th annual report, “Winning the Growth Game: Global Wealth 2015”, has received extensive coverage in the Indian media. The report comes on top of the Global Wealth Databook 2014 from Credit Suisse, which provides a much more...

-PTI The Prime Minister on Thursday launched three missions on Smart Cities, Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation, and Housing for All. States and Union Territories will have a greater say in implementation of the three flagship schemes for urban development launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday, as per the guidelines issued. Operational guidelines for implementation of Smart Cities, Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) and Housing for...

-Economic and Political Weekly A categorical distinction is facing rough weather--that between urban and rural. If we take just agriculture, there is so much of the outside world that comes in not just as external markets but as external inputs. Further, many of our villages barely qualify as rural if we were to take occupation alone. So the earlier line that separated the farmer from the worker in towns is slowly...

-The Hindu Without a head, functioning of Central Information Commission has come to a halt When the Bharatiya Janata Party won by a massive majority in the general election last year, one of the key election promises that brought it to power was transparency and accountability in governance. A year later, many of the electoral promises made on that front remain on paper — the Lokpal Bill and the Grievance Redressal Bill,...

-The New Indian Express KOTTAYAM: There is a sharp decline in money-borrowing from local money lenders and private lending institutions in Ernakulam since the commencement of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), says a study conducted by the School of International Relations and Politics (SIRP) at the Mahatma Gandhi University here. The MGNREG scheme has made headway in Ernakulam district, stresses the Impact Assessment Study conducted by the SIRP...