The word ‘hunger’ does not appear in the 12th Plan Approach Paper even once, whereas according to the latest Global Hunger Index Report, India continues to be in the category of those nations where hunger is ‘alarming’. What is worse, India is one of the three countries where the hunger index between 1996 and 2011 has gone up from 22.9 to 23.7, while 78 out of the 81 developing countries...

The family of an Indian Foreign Service (IFS) officer has received threats and faced protests from her caste group and a section of the village panchayat in haryana’s Bhiwani district for her decision to marry outside her caste. Neelam Sharma, who is currently posted at the Indian mission in Moscow, is set to marry IAS officer Kuldeep Yadav in Delhi on November 8. Yadav, whom Sharma met during training, is currently...

-The Economic Times   Maruti's decision to locate expanded production in Gujarat, following strikes at its plants in haryana, is being widely interpreted as an instance of virtuous policy being rewarded and worker militancy as well as official failure to check it being penalised. Gujarat's industrial peace is the virtue, and its reward is flow of investment to the 'peaceful' state. However, the posited linear relationship between workforce docility and popular welfare...

-The Times of India   Union rural development minister Jairam Ramesh found an occasion for Modi-bashing at the release of UNDP's Human Development Index report, 2011, on Wednesday, saying there had been "retrogression" in social development indices in Narendra Modi-ruled Gujarat. He also blamed the US for being the biggest contributor to non-sustainability, and slammed India for being 'hell-bent' on following the American model of development. Speaking on the linkage between growth and development,...

DAP — the three-letter magic word which rules the life of most farmers. Some say it is not magic, but black magic, like a drug with a tantalising hold that just won’t let you go. DAP is short for Diammonium Phosphate (a commonly used fertiliser). Whether illiterate or not, farmers all over India know about DAP. And, currently, the biggest crisis that they are facing is the 100 per cent...