The omnipresent Common Man scripted the tale of the nation Symbiosis International University of Pune on Saturday instituted the R.K. Laxman Chair in the faculty of media, communication and design to honour the legendary cartoonist for his contribution to communication and media. Mr. Laxman, whose health is delicate, was represented at the ceremony by his wife Kamala Laxman. SIU founder S.B. Mujumdar; the former Union Minister, Mohan Dharia; Vidya Yeravdekar, principal director...

Five years after launching the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, the UPA government is now shifting the focus from mere employment generation to creation of durable assets. With this focus, the Union Ministry of Rural Development has come out with the “MGNREGA works field manual”, which lays down “do’s and don’ts” for the states. The manual has been prepared by a team of experts headed by GN Sharma, who is consultant...

India’s fiscal policy is not supportive of monetary measures that the country’s central bank is employing to fight rampant inflation, the prime minister’s honorary economic advisor and former International Monetary Fund chief economist Raghuram Rajan said, while singling out the proposed Food Security Bill as a particular cause for concern. The Bill, which proposes to give about 68 per cent of population the legal right to subsidised food, will not only...

‘Employment generation’ is the rationale used by every government official from the prime minister to the land acquisition officer to justify the displacement of people for industrial projects. Farmers are aware they are masters of their land but servants of a company. As for compensation, Basu Behera of Noriyasahi, a POSCO project-affected village, said: “I cultivate betel vines, kaju, about 50 quintals of rice yearly and I get coconuts, pineapples, mangoes....

There is nothing wrong in having advisory groups. But there is a problem when groups not constituted legally cross the line of demands, advice and rights-based, democratic agitation. The 1990s saw marketing whiz kids at the largest English daily in the world steal a term then in vogue among sexually discriminated minorities: PLUs — or People Like Us. Media content would henceforth be for People Like Us. This served advertisers' needs...