-The Times of India   After taking lead in helping the country draw up the Rigth to Information Act and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), Rajasthan has become the first state in the country to have drafted a policy underlining the importance and the need to preserve and secure common land (commons) in rural areas. The government has issued a series of orders to facilitate the process and aims...

Planning Commission’s affidavit to the Supreme Court states that adjusting for inflation, the poverty line for an urban person is Rs 32.5 per day per person and for a rural person it is Rs 29.3 per day per person. This has raised an outcry in media and the urban middle class, who consider them outrageously low. Based on these poverty lines, Planning Commission estimates that there are 40.74 crore persons...

Mayawati may have demanded reservation for the Muslims in proportion to their population, but the community has little to cheer about during her five years' rule in Uttar Pradesh. An analysis of Muslims' share in employment and education shows how since 2007 the Muslims have fared worse than dalits in UP on the education front. Demolishing the tall claims of the minority concentration districts' programme to smithereens, the study shows...

Agriculture specialists convening in Bern to debate the question of how to feed the world have agreed on one thing: a new paradigm is needed. Farming models are breaking down – as witnessed by the suicide of a farmer every half hour in India - and new directions for research in agriculture for development are needed to support the sector and combat global poverty. A joint conference hosted by non-government organisation Swissaid...

Jharkhand has thrown up the sharpest signal of the link between urbanisation and diabetes in a survey covering three states and a Union territory. The study by the Indian Council of Medical Research and collaborating institutions, the first to cover entire states, has shown that 13 people in 100 have diabetes in urban Jharkhand but just three per 100 in the state’s rural areas. Projections from the survey, which has covered Jharkhand,...