In June 1991, the country embarked on a bold adventure by exposing to market vicissitudes its insulated manufactories, regulated (but pockmarked with soft spots) financial markets and inexperienced economic players. An economy, in those days, was about people, not giant factories and ships with riches. Though successive governments have secured the reformative underpinnings of the liberalisation process, it is to the credit of players in India that the sublime quest...

In India peasantry is under assault. There is a five-pronged attack on this class and the mighty Indian state is sometimes an active and sometimes a passive abettor. The first point of attack is from the corporate sector. The corporate sector is in a land grab mode. Though not justified, one could understand their urge to get land for industry and real estate purposes. Not that they are causing aggressive...

Anchekatti Rangaswamy, 19, is shifting large rocks from the acres of barren farm land on the outskirts of Yerraguntla, a village 65 km from Kurnool, the gateway to Andhra Pradesh’s drought-prone Rayalaseema region. The work he does during his summer break from college will make the rocky land, belonging to marginal farmers in the area, slightly more cultivable. And the wages the teenager will earn from the job under the Mahatma...

Nearly 65% of class V students in rural areas of Tamil Nadu can’t read even a class II textbook in their mother tongue, 45% don’t know subtraction and nearly 81% can’t read simple English sentences, the Annual Status of Education Report for 2009, compiled by Delhi-based NGO Pratham Foundation, has revealed. The findings of the survey, which had a sample size of 33,000 students in both private and government schools,...

If recent indicators are anything to go by – the failure to keep food prices down, the proposed national food security Act, the failure to ensure even minimum wages to construction workers at projects for the upcoming Commonwealth Games in New Delhi, to recount a few – it seems the country has given up even the pretence of caring about its children or their crippling, unbudging state of malnutrition. Leaders,...