-Economic and Political Weekly Much has been claimed on behalf of the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Amendment Act that has been enacted by Parliament, but the legislation has introduced a watered-down version of auctions, has many exceptions to legalise the old first-cum-firstserve approach, and ignores previous Supreme Court rulings on measures to ensure sustainable development. E A S Sarma (eassarma@gmail.com) is a former Union Power Secretary. With a brute majority in...

-Economic and Political Weekly Unlimited growth for prosperity in a fi nite planet is not possible. Ecological economists like Tim Jackson, Peter Victor, and others talk about prosperity without growth and highlight the need for greening the economy on a community scale. Using the "criteria of green economy enterprise" set by Jackson and Victor as a tool, this article looks at khadi production, India's community-level cloth production system. Sumanas Koulagi (k.sumanas@yahoo.in) is...

-The Asian Age The much-quoted sentence, "there are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies and statistics", was attributed to the 19th century British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli by American author Mark Twain. Although researchers could never find such a statement in any written work of Disraeli, the sentence gained universal popularity to signify how economists and other number-crunchers use the "persuasive power" of figures to make a political point or...

-Economic and Political Weekly   This study reports on a survey of 4,881 users of more than 4,100 works created under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act in Maharashtra. It provides evidence that MGNREGA works support agriculture, and benefit a large number of small and marginal farmers. An overwhelming 90% of the respondents considered the works very useful or somewhat useful, while only 8% felt they were useless. Further, most...

-Economic and Political Weekly The many schemes that have been announced in the name of social security are limited in scope and the quantum of security they prefer. The promotional schemes will also be linked to the market and will benefit the insurance companies. In the meanwhile, basic social security programmes are either ignored or provided limited funding K P Kannan (kannankp123@gmail.com) is Visiting Professor at the Institute for Human Development, New...