-The Indian Express Just a few years ago, the World Bank in its World Development Report claimed that migration from rural India to urban centres is "natural" and the same should not be interrupted or prevented through schemes like the MGNREGA. This was a shocking statement to all those who know why there is huge and ever-growing migration to cities, not only of the labour class but also of farmers and small...

-The Hindu The very process of development and change in India may be generating new forms of social and economic competition that manifest themselves in terms of social bias Popular debate around social biases in India is structured around two competing narratives. One view holds that as an urbanising country with rapid economic growth over the past few decades, the importance of ascriptive identities such as caste and religion is gradually eroding....

-The Indian Express New Delhi: Vegetables are the noble folk of food world, loved equally by doctors and grandmothers. Vegetarians live off them and meat-eaters are told to live off them. But in Delhi, under every crunchy leaf of radish or the shiny brinjal hide dangerous amounts of pesticides that can slowly kill, shows a new study by JNU. Pritha Chatterjee and Aniruddha Ghosal report how growers, consumers and the authorities may...

-The Hindu For the land-acquirer, the land act ordinance tries to lessen the indirect price of acquisition and transaction by diluting requirements for social impact assessments and referenda. For the land-loser, it not only retains all forms of compensation and rehabilitation, but also grows the number of those eligible for lucrative pay-offs The government of India continues to search for the right way to do land acquisition. Last week, the Union Finance...

-The Indian Express Rural wages in India have registered an average annual growth of 3.8 per cent in November, the lowest since July 2005, according to Labour Bureau data. The 3.8 per cent year-on-year increase is a significant drop relative to the two-digit growth rates prevailing until June, and the peak 20 per cent-plus levels of 2011 (see graph). "The numbers confirm the findings in our mid-year economic analysis that inflation is...