About 5000 elderly people will stage a dharna at Jantar Mantar here from May 7 to May 11 demanding universal old-age pension for all those above 55 years. They are mobilised by social rights activists under the banner of Pension Parishad. Co-conveners of the parishad Aruna Roy and Baba Adhav, who launched the movement in Pune on February 1, said the changed socio-economic scenario and the rise in longevity had added to...

-The Hindustan Times Members of Parliament had increased their pension three-fold but a universal pension scheme for senior citizens has remained a piped dream. This is despite the UPA government’s promise before 2009 general elections of providing social security net for vulnerables, said National Advisory Council member Aruna Roy, while announcing a national campaign for demanding monthly old age pension of Rs. 2,000 or half of minimum wage of a state, whichever...

West Bengal: The murder of two CPI(M) leaders in Bardhaman district points to an increase in political violence in the State. THE brutal murder of Pradip Tah, a former legislator belonging to the Communist Party of India (Marxist), or the CPI(M), and Kamal Gayen, another senior leader of the party, in broad daylight, allegedly by Trinamool Congress supporters, in West Bengal's Bardhaman district on February 22 once again points to an...

In a report released on January 30, and covered by the world’s press the next day, the United Nations has warned of a severe resource crisis that would overtake the world if current trends persist. A growing population and a rise in the number of middle-class consumers will increase the demand for resources so rapidly that even by 2030 the world will need at least 50 per cent more food,...

The 11th five-year plan promised the nation “inclusive growth”. It marked a departure from the earlier official position that the “benefits of growth” would automatically “trickle down” to the poor, and that if growth was not actually benefiting the poor, then the reason lay in its not being high enough. The 11th plan, by contrast, conceded that the “benefits of growth” did not automatically “trickle down”, but argued that growth...