A large number of civil society organisations and common people from various districts of Rajasthan staged a massive protest rally in Jaipur on Dec 15 against the state government’s inaction in the implementation of social audits in the NREGS works. They have charged that the state government has deliberately avoided taking action against elected sarpanches who have managed to stall the process of social audits in the state. Over 1500...

It is official now that the poverty in India is much more than earlier estimated. The Suresh Tendulkar Committee report submitted this month (December 09) estimates poverty in India at over 37 per cent (2004-5) and not at 28 per cent as calculated earlier. With recent price rise in food items factored, the current level could be even higher (See the link of the report below). The Government of India had...

Unrelenting protests against price rise by a united Opposition forced the adjournment of the Lok Sabha today after MPs accusing the government of inaction disrupted scheduled discussions. MPs from all non-UPA parties, including the Left, BJP, Samajwadi Party, Janata Dal (United), Biju Janata Dal, Akali Dal and the Shiv Sena, started raising slogans against the government in the House. Opposition MPs also marched in front of Parliament House — inside the complex...

If Paul Samuelson, who died this weekend at the ripe age of 94, has been described in many obituaries as the greatest economist of the 20th century and the “founder of modern economics”, even though most professional economists would credit John Maynard Keynes with that title, it is because most students of economics around the world came to the discipline through his textbook. First published in 1948, Samuelson’s Economics: An...

  A new report by Save the Children, a global child rights organization, says that climate change is the biggest global health threat to children in the 21st century. Titled Feeling the Heat: Child Survival in a Changing Climate (2009), published in advance of the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December 2009, the report examines the vulnerabilities regarding climate change and identifies the adaptation measures that can be taken...