As food and civil supplies minister in the previous SP regime, Raja Bhaiya swindled Rs 100 crore from the PDS. As he presides over the food ministry once again, Ashish Khetan exposes the shocking loot A LITTLE MORE than a month ago, Akhilesh Yadav, chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, earned a landslide victory on the idea of hope: Ummeed ki cycle. He had promised clean governance and a corruption-free government. When...

Unless data gathering for the Socio Economic and Caste Census is refined, the exercise could cast out the real claimants. Have the census enumerators recently knocked on your door with swanky tablet computers in hand? If they have, it's because they have begun to go door-to-door in most States to complete the final phase of the Socio Economic and Caste Census (SECC). This mammoth exercise is being coordinated by more than...

Statistics can abet illusions, unless properly understood and used. The debates on poverty line and budget deficits reflect a lack of understanding of the meaning and purpose of these measures. India has been recently Witness to furious debates on measures of poverty and budget deficits. Any measure can be used only for the purpose it is designed for. The debates in the present cases were furious, because preconceptions and emotions were...

-PTI Political leaders may have divergent views on implementation of provisions of Food Safety and Standards Act 2006, but a senior social scientist here feels that it may not be in the interest of countries like India in view of its socio-economic conditions. "The Act in my opinion is not in favour of India in view of its socio-economic conditions. It may be good for foreign countries but definitely not for Hindustan,"...

In what could be the first major signal of waning popularity of the UPA government’s flagship rural job scheme NREGS, data compiled by the Rural Development Ministry show that the number of households seeking employment under the scheme Witnessed a drastic decline in 2011-12 fiscal as compared to the previous year. The data reveal that the number of households that availed jobs under NREGS declined by over 20 per cent during...