-Livemint.com We don’t know enough about the socio-economic status of different caste groups, and our political class doesn’t want us to know Over the past couple of years, one Indian state after another has been on the boil because of caste-based agitations. The latest state to be engulfed in caste conflict is Maharashtra, where a stir by the dominant caste of Marathas seems to have led other backward classes (OBCs) and...

-Livemint.com The transformation of the Indian countryside has been slow and messy One of the celebrated success stories of India’s growth experience over the past decade was the rapid transformation of the countryside, with a massive shift in the rural labour market away from farm jobs. Two labour economists have now challenged the empirical foundations of that success story, raising deep questions on the nature and scale of that transformation. Their research also...

-Livemint.com Uttar Pradesh fared better under BSP rule than SP regime in economic activities In an attack against Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) leader Mayawati, Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav, on Monday said that if the people of the state vote for development, they would elect the Samajwadi Party (SP) government again as it has outpaced the previous government on the development front. A quick analysis of some of the development indicators in...

-Livemint.com India has a ‘serious’ hunger problem with 15.2% of its citizens undernourished and 38.7% of under-five children stunted, says a new report New Delhi: Like most of its south Asian neighbours, India has a “serious” hunger problem with 15.2% of its citizens undernourished and 38.7% of under-five children stunted, said the Global Hunger Index report released by the Washington based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) on Tuesday. According to the report’s...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: Every day 4,800 applications are filed to access information from the government across India. The first decadal study conducted after Right to Information (RTI) Act implemented in October 2005 has revealed that over 1.75 crore applications have been filed with one-fourth being requests to the Centre. A study conducted by Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI), exclusively accessed by ET, reveals that 27.2% (47.66 lakh) of the total...