-IPS News NEW DELHI: Vinita Panikker, 26, considers herself “the world’s most unfortunate woman”. Three years ago, a jealous husband, who suspected her of having an affair with her boss at a software company, poured a whole bottle of hydrochloric acid on her face while she was asleep. The fiery liquid seared her flesh, blighting her face almost entirely while blinding her in one eye. What remains today of a once pretty visage...

-The New Indian Express If the Government of India writes off the Handloom Reservation Act, more than one lakh weavers in Telangana and AP will be affected, fears All India Federation of Handloom Organisations   The handloom sector which is one of the biggest is always caught in the vicious cycle of low demand, massive unemployment, dwindling incomes and starvation deaths. This time, the problem has been compounded by the Government of India...

-Economic and Political Weekly Unlimited growth for prosperity in a fi nite planet is not possible. Ecological economists like Tim Jackson, Peter Victor, and others talk about prosperity without growth and highlight the need for greening the economy on a community scale. Using the "criteria of green economy enterprise" set by Jackson and Victor as a tool, this article looks at khadi production, India's community-level cloth production system. Sumanas Koulagi (k.sumanas@yahoo.in) is...

-Hindustan Times Many years ago, Jagdish Bhagwati, a very distinguished economist long before he became one of the patron saints of the NDA, published an important paper on what he called Directly Unproductive Activities or DUP. These bore a close relation to what his friend and well-known South Asia scholar, Anne Krueger, had called rent-seeking activities in some slightly earlier work. Both made the important point that the social cost of...

-NDTV Our journey takes us to five villages in Sehore district, Madhya Pradesh, to meet families that do not have a toilet at home. Nearly 65 per cent of households in rural areas of the state are without toilets. Prema and Tanu belong to a Scheduled Caste family of daily wagers in Ahlada Kheda. Students of Class 9 and 10, they are exposed to children from different socioeconomic backgrounds at...