The government has taken the first concrete step to start disbursing subsidies for things like kerosene, cooking gas and fertilisers to individuals, families and farmers by direct cash transfer. A task force under the leadership of Nandan Nilekani, who heads the Unique Identification Authority of India, has been given the target of getting a pilot going by the end of the year. The transfer system will piggyback on the solution...

Even four years after the Sachar Committee Report revealed that Muslims were one of the most economically backward and socially disadvantaged communities, nothing much has been done to address the development deficits of this community. The Constitution of the republic of free India was crafted in troubled but idealistic times. The Indian people were still reeling from Partition bloodshed and the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, in the dark shadows of politics...

It was widely reported in the print media that G.D. Gautama, the Home Secretary of West Bengal, in his affidavit before the Hon’ble Calcutta High Court in the Netai killings affair, hesitantly admitted the existence of illegal armed intruders in that village while denying any knowledge of the existence of similar harmad camps elsewhere in the Jungle Mahal area. One cannot avoid applauding his gallantry in holding our national motto...

With 80 per cent of the world’s people lacking adequate social protection and global inequalities growing, top United Nations officials are calling for a new era of social justice that offers basic services, decently paid jobs, and safeguards for the poor, vulnerable and marginalized. “Social justice is more than an ethical imperative; it is a foundation for national stability and global prosperity,” Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a message ahead of...

Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan wants it to be the new Singapore. State officials call it Urjanchal, land of energy. For sociologist Sakarama Somayaji, the enduring image from India’s emerging energy wonderland in Singrauli is the women who sell baskets of stones on the roadside. Individually or in groups, the women break stones, and sell them to passing trucks for R80-R90 a basket, a day’s labour. The women are...