-The Times of India Most of the poorer, less industrialized states like Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Bihar appear to have done well in increasing their work force in the past decade according to recently released Census 2011 data. Surprisingly, richer or more urbanized states like Punjab, Haryana and Kerala have lagged far behind in job creation. But if you take away natural population growth, the picture changes dramatically. It becomes clear that the...

-The Hindu     In spite of the rosy picture painted by the World Bank, the prospect of eliminating extreme poverty remains distant In a protracted period of gloom and persistent recession with feeble signs of recovery in a large part of the developed world, the World Bank, Brookings Institution and others can be forgiven for their euphoria over the accomplishment of a key Millennium Development Goal (MDG) - of halving extreme poverty in...

-The Times of India New Delhi: The capital's growth in the last decade has overwhelmingly come from the city swallowing up rural areas, newly released census data shows. The number of census towns-essentially newly urbanized villages in the laldora areas-nearly doubled over the last decade, taking the proportion of Delhi's residents who live in these areas to an unprecedented third of the population. Varsha Joshi, director of census operations for Delhi, released...

-NDTV The UPA government's ambitious Food Security Bill finally seems to be getting off the ground at a whopping cost of Rs. 1.25 lakh crore. With constant disruptions by the Opposition in Parliament resulting in a delay in passing the Food Security Bill, the government has decided to not wait any longer. The cabinet will today promulgate an ordinance to push through the bill, which is the brainchild of Congress president Sonia...

-The Hindu Switching to renewable energy sources in the country's midday meal programme will save millions of rupees. But only a few kitchens are doing anything about it, says the author. This is a story of facts and figures and sheer size. Of an auditorium-sized room dense with hot steam from cooking. Of seven tonnes of cooked rice and four tanker-loads of steaming sambar that needed 70 pairs of hands for cutting...