-Economic and Political Weekly While the recent Supreme Court judgment in the Singur land acquisition case has provided relief to the people who lost their lands to Tata Motors Limited, the ruling looked at procedural lapses in the land acquisition law rather than question the concept of "public purpose" that is being distorted to include private interests. Please click here to read more. ...

Rising prices of dal: How to deal with it? The 68th session of the United Nations General Assembly declared 2016 as the International Year of Pulses. In India, however, ordinary citizens are under enormous duress due to the skyrocketing prices of dal/ lentils since the last one year. The website of Price Monitoring Cell of the Department of Consumer Affairs shows that dal prices varied across places. For example, the...

-Economic and Political Weekly Pavitra Mohan (amrit@aajeevika.org) is the Director of Aajeevika Bureau's Health Services and the co-founder of Basic Healthcare Services. Kumaril Agarwal (kumaril_msw@yahoo.com) was a research associate with Aajeevika Bureau during this study. Priyanka Jain (priyanka.jain@aajeevika.org) is with the Centre for Migration and Labour Solutions, Aajeevika Bureau. Remote parts of southern Rajasthan such as Udaipur, Dungarpur, Banswara and Rajsamand are characterised by a predominance of tribal groups and a high...

-Livemint.com Majority in India own a house, but that does not mean opulence like it would mean in an advanced country A year ago, the Union cabinet gave its approval to the “Housing for all by 2022” mission with a special focus on providing affordable housing to economically weaker sections in urban areas. While it is still early days to assess the scheme’s progress, what exactly is the housing situation in...

-Economic and Political Weekly A decade after coming into force, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act is suffering from a decline in employment, budget caps, delays in wage payments and rampant violations of workers' entitlements. An examination of the case of Jharkhand points to reasons for this crisis, including the absence of a strong grievance redressal system, weak financial institutions, acute shortage of functionaries and indiscriminate use of technology....