-The Economic Times I have often been asked how Chhattisgarh manages the contradictory pulls of sound fiscal health and welfare schemes. How did we manage to roll out food and nutrition security to not just the most needy among us but to almost the entire population of a state that has had a history of malnutrition and neglect, without jeopardising Chhattisgarh's finances? As finance minister for the last eight years, I have...

-Down to Earth The most controversial aspect of the food security law is the restructuring of the public distribution system to cover an unprecedented 67 per cent of the population, most of them in the poorer states. LATHA JISHNU, JYOTIKA SOOD and SUCHITRA M explain why there are winners and losers in the new dispensation and how states with better PDS will have to find huge resources to keep their numbers...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: A study commissioned by the Planning Commission to validate the growth estimates of the Twelfth Five-Year Plan has thrown up a rather depressing outlook for the economy, sending alarm bells ringing in the government. An independent think tank, the National Council for Applied Economic Research (NCAER), has pegged average annual growth for the Twelfth Plan at a mere 4.8%, if the present logjam in policymaking continues. The NCAER...

-The Hindu     In spite of the rosy picture painted by the World Bank, the prospect of eliminating extreme poverty remains distant In a protracted period of gloom and persistent recession with feeble signs of recovery in a large part of the developed world, the World Bank, Brookings Institution and others can be forgiven for their euphoria over the accomplishment of a key Millennium Development Goal (MDG) - of halving extreme poverty in...

-Economic and Political Weekly The Saradha group's collapse has possibly bankrupted lakhs of small investors robbing them of their life svaings, and has rendered thousands of its agents jobless. The scam highlights the failure of the government and its regulatory agencies to reign in the mushrooming chit fund companies in West Bengal. It also brings under the scanner the Trinamool Congress' proximity with the tainted group. In the wake of the...