The Supreme Court tells the government: "It's criminal to let food rot in a chronically hungry country. Give it away free to the poor." It could have added: "Have you no political sense? Have you not read Anandamath, or at least seen the movie?" And Manmohan Singh ticks it off for transgressing on policymaking — doesn't it know there's no such thing as a free lunch? He could have added:...

For the first time, a job quota will be thrust on the private sector if the government accepts a panel’s recommendation for reservations for the disabled and turns it into law. The government-instituted committee has suggested extending to the private sector the 3 per cent reservation for the physically challenged that now exists in government jobs. It also wants a 5 per cent quota introduced for disabled students in private educational institutions...

The PPP model proposed in the Eleventh Plan provides for no government or social control over education. It will lead to the privatisation and commercialisation of education using public funds.  Public-private partnership (PPP) has become a fashionable slogan in new development strategies, particularly over the last couple of decades. It is projected as an innovative idea to tap private resources and to encourage the active participation of the private sector...

Caste proponents say the census must include questions on caste to establish true caste ratios. Opponents say questions on caste are socially divisive. They also raise a behavioural objection: the very announcement of a caste census could encourage people to claim, fraudulently, that they belong to a caste entitled to reservations. This behavioural objection applies as forcefully to surveys for determining poverty. The National Sample Survey Organization conducts periodic surveys on...

Democracy and free market have fused into single predatory organism: Arundhati Roy  MoUs with transnational firms resulted in tribals moving out of their lands: Arundhati Roy The problem of market externality poses systemic risks: Chomsky “What happens, now that democracy and the free market have fused into a single predatory organism with a thin constricted imagination that revolves almost entirely around the idea of maximising profit,” asked author Arundhati Roy at a...