-The Hindu Most of the acquisitions by the Central government and public sector companies in the country's resource-rich State are under laws that bypass the new land Bill The UPA has claimed the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement (LARR) Bill 2013 passed by both Houses will reduce forcible acquisition and help tackle Naxalism in mineral-rich areas. But with Coal Bearing Areas Acquisition and Development (CBA)...

-The Hindu Launched in 2006 by the JD(U)-BJP government at the time, the scheme provided money to all girls who enrolled in Class IX through their schools to buy themselves a cycle. The first independent, scientific evaluation of the impact of Bihar's cycles-for-girls programme has shown that the scheme significantly improved female school enrolment and substantially reduced the gender gap in secondary school enrolment. The study, by Karthik Muralidharan, an economist at...

-Down to Earth Claim by GlaxoSmithKline that makes the milk supplement harps only on one aspect of study, which incidentally is funded by another multinational-Nestle A Horlicks advertisement that harps on how milk loses nutrients upon boiling in order to promote the milk supplement does not appear to be based on independent research. It turns out that one of the studies cited by the makers of Horlicks has been funded by Nestle...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: A high-level panel has recommended new criteria for measuring the backwardness of states and proposed the devolution of funds to them through an index that identifies Odisha and Bihar as the least developed states and Goa as the most developed one. The committee had been set up by the government amid demands for "special category" status by Bihar and was headed by the then chief economic...

-Press Information Bureau The India Rural Development Report 2012/13 was released here by Shri Jairam Ramesh, Minister for Rural Development, Government of India. The Report was prepared by IDFC Foundation in collaboration with network partners, the Centre for Economic and Social Studies (CESS), the Institute for Rural Management Anand (IRMA), and the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (IGIDR), with contributions from several other researchers, experts and civil society organisations. On...