-Livemint.com Contrary to the assumption that the middle class is an urban phenomenon, a considerable segment of the Indian middle class resides in rural areas, finds a new study The size of the Indian middle class has always been at the heart of the narrative around India’s economic development. And yet the term middle class remains arbitrarily defined with estimates of its size and characteristics varying significantly based on subjective notions of...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Three summers ago, a water train dispatched by the Centre had chugged into Uttar Pradesh' Bundelkhand region, attempting to provide succour to the parched area. The train had pulled in empty, drawn water from a local reservoir and triggered a massive political row between the Centre and the state government, as a result. This year, the weatherman's predictions for Bundelkhand are bleak as usual, not ruling...

-The Hindu It is shocking that a democratic government is seeking to strengthen the colonial-era Indian Forest Act The Indian Forest Act, 1927 was a remarkable piece of expropriation in the name of conservation. The British government carried out one of the largest land expropriations in history, where the rights to occupy and use forests were transferred from communities with customary and historical property rights to the colonial Central government. The act...

-The Hindu Business Line The former PM added that the economic stimulus that NYAY will provide will further help in fiscal discipline India's nearly $3 trillion economy has the fiscal capacity to absorb the expenditure to fund NYAY, the minimum income support scheme promised by Congress Party, without the need for any new taxes on the middle class, former Prime Minister of India, Dr Manmohan Singh, said. NYAY scheme -- announced by Congress...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The so-called mohalla clinics, or neighbourhood health centres, are an important part of the ruling Aam Aadmi Party’s electoral campaign. AAP had promised 1,000 across Delhi, but opened just 189 till December last year, attributing the failure to start the rest to bureaucratic hurdles. TOI visited eight mohalla clinics in north, east and central Delhi to find that while patients were mostly satisfied with the...