It is tragic that the same government that gives huge corporate concessions and loses money in corruption is fighting over minimum wages. As India's — and by some reckoning the world's — largest rights-based rural safety net programme completes five years, here is a reality check. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) has become the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS). But in a monumental affront to the...

The government has a plan to reach welfare to the poor without wasting money. It wants to put hard cash in their hands instead of spending on welfare programmes. To begin with, it wants to end the public distribution system of food grain and give money directly to the people. Its logic: the new system of cash transfer will plug leakages and save an enormous amount of money. But is it...

The incarceration of Binayak Sen reminded me of the sophist philosopher Thrasymachus's definition of justice in Plato's Republic. Challenged by Socrates to define justice he says: "I proclaim that might is right, and justice is in the interest of the stronger...The different forms of government make laws, democratic, aristocratic, or autocratic, with a view to their respective interests; and these laws, so made by them to serve their interests, they...

Billions of dollars are being made by investors in a speculative "food bubble" that's created record food prices, starving millions and destabilising countries, experts now conclude. Wall Street investment firms and banks, along with their kin in London and Europe, were responsible for the technology dot-com bubble, the stock market bubble, and the recent U.S. and UK housing bubbles. They extracted enormous profits and their bonuses before the inevitable collapse of...

Thiruvoipati Nandakumar How is better delivery expected by allocating more foodgrains, when the system is not equipped to handle even the current level of allocation? The debate about the proposed national food security act seems to be centred on the magnitude of the allocation of food grains. But the issue is far beyond only foodgrains. It is about improving health, sanitation and nutrition standards so that India’s human development goals can be...