India's economic growth has added over seven million new jobs every year for almost a quarter of a century. Workers have seen their wages - adjusted for prices - rise by nearly 3% a year. Poverty rates among wage workers and the self-employed have fallen. Going forward, with swelling numbers of new entrants - and more women entering the job market , as was the case during east Asia's rapid...

The Prime Minister's Office has intervened in the simmering dispute between the home ministry and the Planning Commission over the capture of aadhaar biometrics by ensuring that the issue will be taken up by the Cabinet Committee on UID next week. According to a government source, principal secretary to the prime minister Pulok Chatterjee is learnt to have told officials handling the issue that UID, a major initiative of UPA,...

The Bengal government had introduced a remote-area incentive system that rewarded doctors working in Calcutta for all practical purposes but not in some places that could be reached only by crossing rivers. Calcutta High Court today stayed the order, which was issued by the Mamata Banerjee government last year but did not draw much Attention beyond medical circles. The government order denied several doctors who had served in villages the advantages due...

The lesson for India after Durban is that it needs to formulate an approach that combines Attention to industrialised countries’ historical responsibility for the problem with an embrace of its own responsibility to explore low carbon development trajectories. This is both ethically defensible and strategically wise. Ironically, India’s own domestic national approach of actively exploring “co-benefits” – policies that promote development while also yielding climate gains – suggests that it...

The Supreme Court on Monday posted for final hearing on March 27 a CBI special leave petition against a judgment of the Allahabad High Court, which upheld the dropping of the conspiracy charge by a special court against BJP leaders L. K. Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, Uma Bharti and 18 others in the Babri Masjid demolition case. Senior counsel Ravi Shankar Prasad drew the court's Attention to the fact that the...