-The Hindu   The Communist Party of India (Marxist) on Thursday refuted the “specious explanations” on inflation given by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee saying his statement hid the government's failure to check price rise. Reacting to his November 22 suo motu statement in Parliament, the CPI(M) Polit Bureau said: “It is nothing but an exercise in deception to conceal the utter failure of the UPA government in checking the relentless price rise.” While referring...

Recent events in south Asia have led to an unexpected reversal in the narrative of microfinance, long presented as a development success. Despite charges of poor treatment of clients, exaggeration of the impact on the poorest as well as the risks of credit bubbles, the sector can play a non-negligible role in reaching financial services to low-income households. In regulating the sector, there is need for caution in setting interest...

An unprecedented economic growth during the last decade has also seen increasing malnutrition, hunger and starvation amongst certain sections of society. India ranks 66 in the Food and Agriculture Organisation’s (FAO’s) World Hunger Index of 88 countries (Inter-national Food Policy Research Institute). More than 200 million people in this country are denied the right to food. One-third of all underweight children (57 million) in the world due to lack of...

-The Indian Express   Reserve Bank of India Governor D Subbarao on Tuesday cautioned that policies — the significant increase in rural wages triggered by the MGNREGS and inflationary implications of the proposed Food Security Bill — aimed at inclusive growth can stoke inflationary pressures at any rate in the short-term. “The need for making growth inclusive is incontestable, but it is important to recognise that policies aimed at inclusion can stoke inflationary...

At the technical level, the question is whether the technology deployed for identification will return answers that are unambiguous. THE Unique Identification (UID) project, the national project of the Government of India, aims to give a unique 12-digit number – called Aadhaar – to every citizen of the country, a random number that is generated and linked to a person's demographic and biometric information. The key word is “unique”. Launched in...