-Hindustan Times One of the closest electoral battles for Bihar, where PM Narendra Modi and CM Nitish Kumar are playing out their old rivalry, begins with the first phase of polling in 49 of a total 243 seats on Monday. Strategies by alliances to bite off each other’s caste pie and focus on issues such as beef, detached from ground realities, have arguably made Mandate 2015 the toughest ever with BJP desperate...

-Hindustan Times Patna: Guns and goons have played a key role in Bihar’s politics for decades. As the eastern state heads to the polls next month, outlaws with itchy trigger fingers as well as ‘baahubalis’, or strongmen, are back in the frame. Dozens of erstwhile gangsters have found their way into mainstream politics either directly or through spouses and relatives. Some of them will not contest the polls, but their influence can...

-The Hindu The Budget overlooks the fact that human capabilities are as important as physical capital for economic growth and the quality of life. It goes back to the days when growth and development sounded synonymous, physical capital was thought to be the key, and human capital took a back seat Once upon a time, around the end of the Second World War, there was a naive view in development economics that...

-The Hindustan Times       Gandhinagar (Gujarat): Narendra Modi may have criticised Aadhaar, but official documents show the Gujarat government has implemented the central programme efficiently, while collecting more personal data than required in some cases. The Gujarat government also warned people of "penal action" if the data was not submitted, the documents said, adding chief minister Modi was appointed as the chairperson of the committee overseeing the implementation of Aadhaar. These documents...

-Live Mint Data shows that Indian growth has moved in sync with what was happening in the rest of the world while Indian inflation has had a life of its own Mumbai: The war of words between P. Chidambaram and Yashwant Sinha on the way the Indian economy has been managed over the past decade is the sort of political grandstanding that is expected in the last stage of what has...