Analysts have documented in some detail the constraints facing the government: the countryside is vast; the forests help protect the militants; the adivasi population in particular supports them; the hit-and-run tactics of the Maoists keep the security forces off balance; the increasing unification of the various factions makes the movement formidable and not easy to divide and conquer; its access to money and guns is growing as is its political...

India may next year witness its first Census since Independence that refers to caste, if the Centre accepts a social justice ministry recommendation that could be politically controversial. Officials said the ministry had asked for caste to be included as one of the criteria in the 2011 Census, and recommended a differential headcount of the Other Backward Classes and reassessment of their conditions that could lead to changes in the OBC...

The Centre is veering round to accepting the N C Saxena committee’s methodology for identifying below poverty line (BPL) families through a Census but may go in for a crucial change — replace ‘‘Muslim’’ with ‘‘minority’’ for extra weightage on poverty index. The Union rural development ministry is considering minorities as a whole, in place of only Muslims, who are to be given an extra point weightage in BPL identification....

Copenhagen showed how fast and far India has traveled geo-politically. The same, alas, cannot be said about the health of the nation. On the international stage, India’s relentless focus on equity made us proud. The time has come to apply that principle at home. India’s ailing health delivery system is viewed as a worthy but dull topic on a normal day in a typical newsroom in the country. Typically, such neglected...

The process for finalising the parameters for the 2011 Census is on, and a key question is yet to be answered. In response to a question in Parliament, Union Minister of State for Home Ajay Maken said that the Census exercise would be conducted between February 9 and 28, 2011. But there was no word on whether information on caste would be elicited. India’s decennial Census is the largest data...