-The Hindu One of the most prominent features of India’s middle-class-driven public culture has been an obsession about our GDP growth rate, and a facile equation of that number with a sense of national achievement or impending arrival into affluence. In media headlines, political speeches, and everyday conversations, the GDP growth rate number — whether it is five per cent or eight per cent or whatever — has become a staple...

-The Hindustan Times Inequality between the richest and the poorest has risen at a faster rate in cities as compared to rural India raising questions over the impact of UPA government's inclusive growth agenda. It was believed that benefits of liberalisation unveiled in 1992 were more for urban India because of increase in incomes for all classes as compared to rural India. The myth seems have been broken by a new Planning Commission...

-Al Jazeera UK-based charity says the world's 100 richest people earned enough in 2012 to end global poverty four times over. The world's 100 richest people earned enough money last year to end world extreme poverty four times over, according to a new report released by international rights group and charity Oxfam. The $240 billion net income of the world's 100 richest billionaires would have ended poverty four times over, according to the...

-Tehelka Edited Excerpts From An Interview NOTED ECONOMIST and Columbia University Professor Jagdish Bhagwati’s pro-free trade stance is well-known. A friend of the prime minister and his batch mate from Cambridge University, Professor Bhagwati feels the UPA’s departure from the stagnation of the past few years is a welcome change, and lauds the decision to allow FDI in multi-brand retail. In an interview to TEHELKA Business Editor Shaili Chopra, Bhagwati says more...

The total expenditure on central schemes for the poor and on the major subsidies exceeds the states' share of central taxes. These schemes are chronic bad performers due to a culture of immunity in public administration and weakened local governments. Arguing that the poor should be trusted to use these resources better than the state, a radical redirection with substantial direct transfers to individuals and complementary decentralisation to local governments...