Inequality in India is worseNINg and clearly following the US pattern India is a “relatively low-income inequality country” – to borrow an expression from a World Bank publication – when compared to China or Brazil, but there is no doubt that disparities have been wideNINg of late. PlanNINg Commission officials have admitted that inequality has risen in the first decade of the new millennium, although the factors responsible for it need...

-Rediff.com Press Council Chairman Justice Markandey Katju on Saturday said anti-corruption activist Anna Hazare lacks the scientific ideas that are needed to solve the problem of graft. The PCI chairman also took a dig at the media for "hyping" up issues such as the 100th century of Sachin Tendulkar, retirement of Rahul Dravid, pregnancy of Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and death of film star Dev Anand. "This Anna Hazare movement, I have not spoken...

To get the Below Poverty Line figures in perspective, we need to closely monitor the numbers driving the Corporate Plunder Line. One Tendulkar makes the big scores. The other wrecks the averages. The PlanNINg Commission clearly prefers Suresh to Sachin. Using Professor Tendulkar's methodology, it declares that there's been another massive fall in poverty. Yes, another (“more dramatic in the rural areas”). “Record Fall in Poverty” reads one headline. The record...

India’s Bt cotton dream is going terribly wrong. For the first time, farmer suicides, including those in 2011-12, have been linked to the decliNINg performance of the much hyped genetically modified (GM) variety adopted by 90% of the country’s cotton-growers since being allowed a decade ago. Policymakers have hailed Bt cotton as a success story but a January 9 internal advisory, a copy of which is with HT, sent out to...

Says respond else face action Annoyed by the non-submission of reports regarding illegal clinical trials of breast cancer drug, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has issued notices to the Union health ministry and the Andhra Pradesh government. It has asked the Centre and the state government to respond within six weeks or face action. The commission had in June last year sent notices to the Union health secretary, secretary of the...