TODAY, India is considered around the world as a rapidly developing country posting economic growth rates of around 8-9 percent consistently over the last several years. Along with China, which is much further ahead, India is seen as a powerhouse of the global economy in the decades to come and already it is home to a very large number of dollar billionaires, perhaps the largest such number in Asia. In...

  Can we agree in this country on a floor of human dignity below which we will not allow any human being to fall? No child, woman or man in this land will sleep hungry. No person shall be forced to sleep under the open sky. No parent shall send their child out to work instead of to school. And no one shall die because they cannot afford the cost of...

-The Business Standard   Remember the food riots of 2008? Is the world heading towards another food crisis? That, worryingly, seems to be the conclusion that a new publication on food prices and availability in the next decade (2011-20), issued jointly by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), arrives at. The OECD-FAO report forecasts agricultural commodity prices, in real terms,...

Many in India feel betrayed that neoliberal economic policies have not ended but increased fraud and corruption Corruption is not exactly new in India. Quite apart from the extensive historical evidence of its spread, during and after the "mixed economy" period of state planning, the "licence-permit raj" was regularly accused by commentators of breeding graft, constraining economic activity and forcing citizens to be at the mercy of corrupt officialdom at all...

Ensuring food security to all is one of India’s top policy agendas today. Given a large mass of poverty in the country, it is not surprising and no one would perhaps disagree with the need to achieve this as soon as possible. But the varied policy instruments that can be used towards achieving this goal draw sharp differences among the stakeholders. What is food security? The World Food Summit of 1996...