The crux of the problem is not leakages, but unsold stocks. The debate on the public distribution system is being increasingly overwhelmed by the issue of corruption. The pressures on the system are seen primarily, if not entirely, as one of leakages. This preoccupation with leakages has reached a point where the government appears set to throw up its hands and just hand over cash to families, irrespective of whether they...

The chattering classes of urban India are engaged in animated discussions about Didi, scams, policy paralysis , faltering reforms and declining growth. Meanwhile, the farming classes, who haven't seen much reform since the Green Revolution 50 years ago, continue to combine bits of modern technology with their ingenious capacity for 'jugaad' in transforming traditional agriculture. Here are a few examples. The tractor displaced the bullock in ploughing and other farm operations....

New census data on asset ownership among different social groups has shown that a far higher proportion of scheduled castes and higher still of scheduled tribes do not own basic consumer durables like a phone or bicycle as compared to "others". Three states however buck this trend; across caste groupings in Punjab, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, the rate of ownership of basic consumer durables is high. In fact, the asset ownership...

Remote controls are identified as technical devices which are used for various purposes ranging from the launching of space-ships to the monitoring of toy cars. But of late, these devices are being used to direct policies for nation states which are formally sovereign. We speak here of the powerful lobby of international credit rating agencies like Standard and Poor's (S&P), which has just delivered its sermon that India is no longer...

Roads in Rajasthan are getting a lot of attention under Road Transport and Highways Minister C P Joshi, the Lok Sabha member from the state’s Bhilwara seat. Over the past year, Rajasthan has got more national highways than any other state, and nearly 50 per cent more than the next biggest beneficiary. Joshi succeeded Kamal Nath as highways minister in January 2011. That year, 1,545 km of state highways and other...