-The Business Standard Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen, who has just written An Uncertain Glory: India and its Contradictions with Jean Dreze, tells Mihir S Sharma that he doesn't understand why his book has received an angry reaction, or why he is being called anti-growth and pro-redistribution. * Is it startling to discover that you are being called a licence Raj socialist? It is very strange indeed. Perhaps some of this reaction is...

-The Business Standard The tragedy involving the death of children in a Bihar school should reinforce recent efforts to improve the programme, notes Amarjeet Sinha. The sad loss of 23 innocent lives after consuming hot cooked meals in a school in Bihar has rightly shocked and angered people. The highly poisonous pesticide monocrotophos found in children's food and a headmistress overlooking the cook and the children's protests about the oil and not...

KEY TRENDS   • According to National Sample Survey report no. 583: Persons with Disabilities in India, the percentage of persons with disability who received aid/help from Government was 21.8 percent, 1.8 percent received aid/help from organisation other than Government and another 76.4 percent did not receive aid/ help *8   • As per National Family Health Survey-4 (NFHS-4), the Under-five Mortality Rate (U5MR) was 57.2 per 1,000 live births (for the non-STs it was 38.5)...

-The Hindu     Action, not just offering flowers, will be the real tribute As the nation pays tribute to Dr. B.R. Ambedkar on his 122 birth anniversary (April 14), one would realise that much more remains to be done to achieve his aim of social equality for the suppressed classes. A principal architect in drafting the Constitution, he made significant efforts at giving political rights and social freedom to Dalits. However, till date,...

-The Hindu     The shortened lifespan of the quarry workers of Uttar Pradesh is spent breaking stones and residing among the pollution- laden boulders Mired with sandy roads and rocky terrain, the landscape in south-western Allahabad creates a remarkable mirage under the blue sky. Some of the larger rocks here have sizeable craters formed in them -- a sign of their depletion over time, by an activity that is hazardous yet critical to the...