-The Hindu Development, price rise and jobs will be the overriding voter concerns in 2014 Lok Sabha poll Results from a nearly 20,000-strong opinion poll conducted by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) for CNN-IBN and The Hindu indicate that ‘development and the economy' and ‘price rise' will dominate voter concerns in 2014. Corruption comes in at a distant fifth, just half as important to voters as ‘development and...

-The Business Standard The tragedy involving the death of children in a Bihar school should reinforce recent efforts to improve the programme, notes Amarjeet Sinha. The sad loss of 23 innocent lives after consuming hot cooked meals in a school in Bihar has rightly shocked and angered people. The highly poisonous pesticide monocrotophos found in children's food and a headmistress overlooking the cook and the children's protests about the oil and not...

-PTI GUWAHATI: The government's spending on Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act scheme in Assam has been declining continuously in the last four fiscals and it dropped by 13 per cent during 2012-13. According to official documents, the total expenditure, including both the Centre and the state's shares, in Assam on MGNREGA during 2012-13 stood at Rs 651.55 crore. However, the same was Rs 748.44 crore during the previous financial year. The spending...

-Outlook Social indices topper Kerala just can't stop the baby deaths in its malnutrition-hit tribal Attapady belt Under the thick canopy of a peepal tree, beside the road that winds to Pallur Ooru in Attapady in the Western Ghats, is a small tribal burial ground. There are no tombstones to mark the graves and on closer look one sees tiny mounds where the mud has been disturbed. In a quiet corner,...

-The Business Standard But many numbers point to contrary trends The latest numbers on poverty levels are dramatic; they show that the number of people below the poverty line (as defined by the late economist Suresh Tendulkar) has shrunk from 37 per cent of the population to 22 per cent, in the seven years to 2011-12. This is an unprecedented rate of fall in poverty levels; some 40 per cent of those...