Gail Omvedt, an America-born Indian, is a social anthropologist trained in the radical academic setting of the University of California during the angry 1960s and the tumultuous 1970s. Her doctoral thesis on the “Non-Brahman movement in western India, 1873-1920” set the stage for her engagement with the subcontinent. Today, first-rate professionals are making a beeline for the West, but in Omvedt we have an instance of the ‘reverse flow' happening some...

-The Hindu Business Line   The Rural Development Minister, Mr Jairam Ramesh's proposal to amend the law on minimum wages to permit a lower wage for employment under the rural jobs scheme (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act or MGNREGA) makes practical sense. The Karnataka High Court ruled recently that wages set under MGNREGA cannot be independent of the MWA. Effectively, it means there can be no such thing as an...

By the end of this year, one in every 10 Indians will be an Internet user, making the country the third-largest Internet market in the world after Chinaand the United States.  At the end of December, 121 million Indians will be accessing the Internet at least once a week to check emails, chat or log on to a social network, a survey has found. India is adding Internet users at the...

It has to be but a means to development, not an end in itself Is India doing marvellously well, or is it failing terribly? Depending on whom you speak to, you could pick up either of those answers with some frequency. One story, very popular among a minority but a large enough group—of Indians who are doing very well (and among the media that cater largely to them)—runs something like...

'Economic growth will need massive energy. Will we allow an accident in Japan, in a 40-year-old reactor at Fukushima, arising out of extreme natural stresses, to derail our dreams to be an economically developed nation?' Every single atom in the universe carries an unimaginably powerful battery within its heart, called the nucleus. This form of energy, often called Type-1 fuel, is hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of times more powerful...