-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Centre intends to exempt political parties from RTI scrutiny on the ground that they are not "substantially funded" by the government and so are not required to reveal details such donors and other funding sources. The government expects to consult political parties to firm up a consensus on undoing the Central Information Commission order putting parties under the ambit of the Right to Information Act...

-The Business Standard 7 things you should know in the Bhagwati vs Sen slugfest Jagdish Bhagwati and Amartya Sen are the two Indian economists who are most respected for their work. Both have worked on a broad spectrum of issues, though Sen is best known for his work on public choice and development and Bhagwati for his work on trade. They are both liberal, neoclassical economists, who support deregulation and disapprove of...

-PTI NEW DELHI: Nobel laureate economist Amartya Sen, who has been critical of Narendra Modi's model of governance, has said there are lessons to be learnt even from Gujarat which had good business performance and infrastructure though it lagged in health, literary and minority rights. Sen, at the same time, pointed that there are bigger things to learn from Kerala, Tamil Nadu and even Himachal Pradesh, a state where he said "transformation...

-The New York Times Blog The right to food is finally becoming a lively political issue in India. Aware of the forthcoming national elections in 2014, political parties are competing to demonstrate - or at least proclaim - their commitment to food security. In a country where endemic undernutrition has been accepted for too long as natural, this is a breakthrough of sorts. The rhetoric, however, is not always matched by understanding...

-The Hindu The National Food Security Ordinance, which President Pranab Mukherjee signed into law last week, has been touted as especially attentive to the needs of women and children. A closer inspection of the Ordinance, however, suggests otherwise - its provisions in fact ignore the distinct socio-economic roles of women and children in society. Moreover, the Ordinance glosses over entire subsets of women and children, including those who are arguably the...