-Livemint.com/ Bloomberg To join the global middle class, India must do much better Max Roser is at it again. The Oxford professor and master of economic data visualization has a new set of maps and charts showing how global income and inequality have changed during the last couple of centuries. The upshot is that while the world has gotten steadily richer that entire time, something very special and very good has...

-The Times of India MUMBAI: The Maharashtra government has acquired a staggering 1.92 lakh hectares of land - 4.4 times the size of Greater Mumbai - over nearly 15 years. These details have emerged from the latest data compiled by the state government and accessed by The Times of India. Information on land acquisition is rarely made available for public scrutiny. Most of the land acquired is agricultural and the bulk of...

-Frontline India’s forest cover has been steadily growing in recent years, with a steep rise in the extent of very dense forests, but the loss of over 20,000 sq km of moderately dense forests is a cause for concern. India’s forest cover has increased by 5,871 square kilometres from the government’s 2011 assessment to 6,97,898 sq km or 69.79 million hectares, according to the Indian State of Forest Report 2013 released...

-The Times of India Bringing a sigh of relief to parents who were being pressured by schools to provide their wards' Aadhaar numbers, the state government clarified to the Karnataka high court on Thursday that it is not mandatory. Government advocate ES Indiresh told the court instructions have been issued to schools saying that Aadhaar is optional. The government made the submission before Justice Ashok B Hinchigeri in response to a petition...

-Hindustan Times India’s back-to-back drought is likely to end in winter with the weather department predicting higher-than-normal rainfall between October and December in the southern part of the country and normal rains in the rest, boosting prospects of the winter harvest. The rabi, or winter-sown, season is vital since it accounts for nearly half the country’s total food output. The forecast eases worries about water shortages in the nation’s 89 nationally important...