-PTI In signs of rising income inequality, India’s richest 1 per cent now hold a huge 58 per cent of the country’s total wealth — higher than the global figure of about 50 per cent, a new study showed on Monday. The study, released by rights group Oxfam ahead of the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting here attended by rich and powerful from across the world, showed that just 57 billionaires...

-Economic and Political Weekly The powerful feedback mechanism of raising growth and inequality simultaneously combines restraint on government welfare spending, wilful default of bank loans by corporate houses and land acquisition for them. This creates not just a vicious circle but a rising and expanding spiral driven by a strategy of promoting the climate for private investment. Please click here to read more. ...

-Livemint.com We don’t know enough about the socio-economic status of different caste groups, and our political class doesn’t want us to know Over the past couple of years, one Indian state after another has been on the boil because of caste-based agitations. The latest state to be engulfed in caste conflict is Maharashtra, where a stir by the dominant caste of Marathas seems to have led other backward classes (OBCs) and...

-The Hindu A more progressive Central law on land acquisition is now in place, but several States have already either amended the new law or enacted legislation of their own. On August 31, the Supreme Court in Kedar Nath Yadav v. State of West Bengal delivered one of the most momentous decisions of the year. It invalidated the expropriation of land in Singur by the erstwhile Left Front government in Bengal, and...

-Down to Earth A new report by the World Bank finds that extreme poverty is falling globally A new World Bank study on poverty and shared prosperity says that extreme poverty continues to fall worldwide despite the lethargic state of the global economy. However, the report warns that given projected growth trends, reducing high inequality may be necessary for reaching the goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030. In 60 out of the...