The worse off the poor become, the healthier our Ministers get. Air India might not be doing as well we'd like it to. But the braveheart who flew it fearlessly into dense clouds of debt is doing okay. Praful Patel (who no longer holds the aviation portfolio) added, on average, over half a million rupees every day to his assets in 28 months between May 2009 and August 2011. This might...

Amid policy battles over food production, energy resources and economic decline, one untapped natural resource that is guaranteed to boost production on a global scale has been stubbornly overlooked – the power of women in the labour force. According to the World Bank's 2012 World Development Report (WDR) "Gender Equality and Development", ensuring equal access for women farmers would increase maize yields by 11 to 16 percent in Malawi and 17...

The finance ministry has put its seal of approval on a proposal to directly transfer subsidies to the bank account of a beneficiary that is linked to her Aadhaar, or unique identification (UID) number. The government has previously articulated its desire to experiment with direct transfers to make its management of subsidies more efficient and ensure benefits actually reach the targeted people. In a notification issued on Tuesday, the finance ministry extended...

The Planning Commission’s new definition of poverty widely criticised as being unrealistic has caused disquiet in the UPA, with Congress leaders privately dubbing the benchmarks insensitive and ally NCP publicly slamming them as an “insult to the poor”. Congress leaders believe the figures, under which anyone spending more than Rs 32 a day in urban areas and Rs 26 in villages will not be considered poor and hence will not be...

Sunday’s 6.8 magnitude earthquake on the Sikkim-Nepal border has wreaked havoc in the Himalayan country and the north- east Indian state, but scientists say the likelihood of a much greater earthquake in north India remains. Despite a decade-long upgrade of seismic monitoring instruments, scientists say their data is insufficient to be able to predict quakes anytime this decade. “Technically, this is classified as a moderate quake (with a magnitude less than 7);...