A THREE-HOUR motorcycle ride from the border with Andhra Pradesh’s Khammam district and the thick jungles of Chhattisgarh close in. This is remote terrain — villages are spread out over several kilometres; distances measured by the hours taken to walk from one village to another. Schools, hospitals and motorable paths are not even imagined. This is also a self-declared Maoist stronghold. Outside every village stand red concrete columns 25 feet...

Paul A. Samuelson, the first American Nobel laureate in economics and the foremost academic economist of the 20th century, died Sunday at his home in Belmont, Mass. He was 94. His death was announced by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which Samuelson helped build into one of the world’s great centres of graduate education in economics. In receiving the Nobel Prize in 1970, Samuelson was credited with transforming his discipline...

Paul A. Samuelson, the first American Nobel laureate in economics and the foremost academic economist of the 20th century, died Sunday at his home in Belmont, Mass. He was 94. His death was announced by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which Samuelson helped build into one of the world’s great centres of graduate education in economics. In receiving the Nobel Prize in 1970, Samuelson was credited with transforming his discipline from...

An ambitious human resource development ministry proposal aimed at ending persistent gaps between allocated and needed funds that plague the midday meal scheme has been rejected by a key finance panel. The Centre’s expenditure finance committee (EFC) has dumped the ministry proposal to tie costs of the meal scheme to fluctuating commodity prices through a special pricing index, The Telegraph has learnt. The EFC’s approval is mandatory for central proposals with...

KEY TRENDS   • As per the 2019 Global Hunger Index report, neighbouring countries such as China (GHI score: 6.5; GHI rank: 25), Sri Lanka (GHI score: 17.1; GHI rank: 66), Myanmar (GHI score: 19.8; GHI rank: 69), Nepal (GHI score: 20.8; GHI rank: 73), Bangladesh (GHI score: 25.8; GHI rank: 88) and Pakistan (GHI score: 28.5; GHI rank: 94) have outperformed India (GHI score: 30.3; GHI rank: 102) *13    • As per the 2018 Global Hunger Index report,...