-The Times of India   Is wealth trickling up instead of down? Yes, says rockstar economist Thomas Piketty whose new book proposing a wealth tax on the super rich has sparked off a firestorm. Excerpts from an exclusive interview... His book Capital in the Twenty-First Century has put the spotlight on Thomas Piketty, transforming the Paris School of Economics professor to global superstar. In these troubled times, he highlights a troubling issue:...

-The Hindu   If Gujarat is a model, then the real toppers in development indicators, like Kerala and Tamil Nadu, must be supermodels In an earlier article published on this page ("The Gujarat Muddle," April 11, 2014), I pointed out that Gujarat's development achievements were hardly "model" class. This is pretty firm ground: the same point has been made by a long list of eminent economists. Yet confusion persists, so I decided to...

-Economic and Political Weekly   This paper quantifies the improvements in the public distribution system in rural India after 2004-05 using data from three rounds of surveys conducted by the National Sample Survey. It finds that Tamil Nadu and Himachal Pradesh continue to be the leading performers, but early movers such as Odisha saw improvements in the functioning of the PDS between 2004-05 and 2009-10. In late movers such as Bihar and...

-Live Mint   Building toilets holds the key to reducing India's malnutrition burden Commenting on the Indian elections in his satire show, British humorist John Oliver remarked, "(Narendra) Modi has managed to inspire people with his populist platform including a pledge to put a toilet in every home. That's a bold move, coming out as pro-toilet." Oliver's wisecrack may have deliberately exaggerated Narendra Modi's pitch on toilets but the focus on sanitation has been...

-The United Nations   Releasing new statistics today, the United Nations International Telecommunications Union (ITU) announced that by end 2014, there will be nearly three billion Internet users - two-thirds of them from the developing world - with mobile-broadband penetration approaching 32 per cent. "The newly released ICT [information and communications technology] figures confirm once again that information and communication technologies continue to be the key drivers of the information society," said Hamadoun...