-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...

-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 Hindu Suha came to Delhi as an 18-year-old nanny-cum-domestic help to a middle class household in Janakpuri. The going seemed fine enough -- her employers paid her full wages, did not force her to do overtime and even gave her an occasional holiday. The dream run got murky with the neighbour’s 20-something-year-old son “discovering” Suha. He would use every opportunity to harass and molest the young girl. One dreadful day...

We are providing below the revised version of the above mentioned article (in pdf), which was originally published in Outlook, 14 November, 2011 Is India doing marvellously well, or is it failing terribly? Depending on whom you speak to, you could pick up either of those answers with some frequency. One story, very popular among a minority – but a large enough group - of Indians who are doing very well...

-PTI The Punjab government is likely to roll out the state’s first agriculture policy by mid-December, aimed to make farming profession economically viable by suggesting measures to raise farmers’ dwindling income and promote crop diversification. “The farm is expected to come out by mid-December. The draft of the agriculture policy is ready and it has been circulated among experts of different fields to elicit their views and opinions so as to incorporate...