The grievance redress system in the country is “poor” and public service providers “lack accountability”. This is indicated by the fact that 95 per cent of the households that were asked to pay a bribe ended up doing so. This is revealed by a new survey, ‘India Corruption Study: 2010', prepared by the Centre for Media Studies. The report, based on a survey of around 10,000 households across 12 major cities,...

China's population grew to 1.34 billion by 2010, according to census data, which showed an ageing and more urban population that experts say is likely to spur calls for the "one-child" policy to be relaxed. The census released on Thursday showed the population in China, the world's second biggest economy, grew by 5.84 percent from the 1.27 billion in the last census in 2000 and to a level that was smaller...

It was indeed an unusual ''social movement''. A group of ''activists'' who had banded together to draft one version of a bill that would establish a statutory institution to investigate corruption in the political establishment sits in protest demanding the acceptance and passage of its version of the bill. The protest has elements of a social drama inasmuch as it fronts an elderly leader, Anna Hazare, with Gandhian credentials, a...

A transparent assessment of the costs and risks associated with India's ambitious nuclear plans must be made before any ground is broken at Jaitapur or elsewhere. You really have to hand it to the nuclear industry. In any other sphere of the economy, a major industrial disaster is likely to have adverse, long-term financial consequences for the company or companies whose product or activity was involved in the accident, regardless of...

Planning Commission on Wednesday claimed the UPA government’s inclusive agenda had uplifted around 7 crore from below poverty line (BPL) during the 11th Five-Year Plan period (2007-12). The initial findings suggest that absolute poverty in the country may have come down by five percentage points during the 11th Plan. Satisfied with the figures, deputy chairman of Plan panel Montek Singh Ahluwalia said the government’s policy for inclusive growth is paying off. He...