-The New York Times India's coalition government just celebrated the third anniversary of its tenure with a self-congratulatory banquet that could not have been more poorly timed: India's currency, the rupee, is falling; investment is down; inflation is rising; and deficits are eating away at government coffers. While short-term growth has slowed but not ground to a halt, India's problems have dampened hopes that it, along with China and other non-Western economies,...

Lack of knowledge, fear of political criticism are some of the reasons that are stopping FCI, according to experts What is stopping Food Corp. of India Ltd (FCI) from selling its ample wheat stocks in the open market and buying futures contracts to meet its distribution commitments in the months ahead? Or, for that matter, what is keeping the food procurement agency from selling grain futures internationally, knowing that a bumper crop...

The World of Work 2012 report presents a bleak picture of the global job situation. FOUR years after the global crisis erupted in 2008, organisations such as the International Labour Organisation (ILO) believe that labour markets still have not fully recovered. The world economy is not expected to grow at a sufficient pace over the next couple of years to overcome the crisis. These organisations present some depressing facts: those...

Why has there been such a silence from dalit leaders over the Bathani Tola judgment acquitting all those accused of killing 21 dalits? At the same time, what explains their loud protests over the Ambedkar cartoons in the textbooks? Has the elevation of Ambedkar as an icon relegated the dalit leadership to a politics of empty symbolism? Is the issue of a lack of accountability in the judicial system towards...

Soon, the country’s estimated 40 million people with disabilities will be able to track job opportunities at the click of a mouse. www.jobability.org will be launched tomorrow at a national conference on livelihood for persons with disability held by business chamber Ficci. The site is designed to be friendly for the disabled and will be exclusively for use by such people. The portal, the first such initiative in South Asia that...