The Sonia Gandhi-led national advisory council (NAC) has won decisive victories in keeping at bay the governments attempt to regulate right to information and ensuring the pro-tribal Forest Rights Act is made more effective for its intended beneficiaries. On the national Food Security Act -- the third bone of contention between the government and NAC -- the Council at its meeting on Saturday held its ground and advocated a staggered...

The sharp rise in food prices inflation will remain a major cause of concern as inflationary pressures on the domestic front are likely to be exacerbated by higher levels of global commodity prices, the Economic Survey has said. It also indicated that the political turmoil in the Middle East and the “easy money” policy being followed by developed nations trying to jump-start their own economies after the global recession of 2008-09...

Cash transfers, the latest global development fashion, involve several risks in India, not least the risk of forgetting the need for continuing structural change. WHEN I was growing up, several decades ago, middle-class society in India was always a little delayed in catching on to Western fashions whether in music or dress or in other aspects. The past decades of globalisation seemed to have changed all that. Modern communications technology...

The allocations earmarked for women as a proportion of the total Union budget outlay has gone up from 3% in 2007-08 (revised estimate) to 6.1% in 2010-11 (budget estimate) It will be seven years since the government, acknowledging a gender imbalance, introduced gender budgeting in 2005-06. Ever since then, the annual budget has been accompanied by a gender budgeting statement. An analysis of the last four Union budgets reveals two things....

By stubbornly overruling the National Advisory Council, the government risks defeating its purpose as a body that speaks for the poor and the disadvantaged. HAS the Manmohan Singh government begun to regard the National Advisory Council (NAC) as an adversary who should be undermined? Going by their exchanges on key issues such as food security, wages under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), and the implementation of the Scheduled Tribes...