-The Economic Times MUMBAI: Soaring diesel consumption by fleet owners, telecom companies to keep their towers running and malls to pamper their affluent customers is blowing up the theory that continuation of diesel subsidies is intended to help farmers and truckers in order to keep inflation low. Diesel consumption is growing at a rapid pace that is lining the pockets of the business community rather than the government's intention to help poor...

-The Hindu Imperative to collect and analyse data in such cases India calls them its future. But as lakhs of children are kidnapped across the country each year, pushed into sex or organ trade or bonded labour, precious little is being done to find and restore them to their parents. For these children, it is living through the worst nightmare. Getting lost in markets and seeing strange faces all around may put a...

-The Hindu Batting for about 30 lakh sugarcane farmers of Uttar Pradesh, Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav has expressed his reservation over the Central Government’s proposal to de-regulate the sugar and cane sectors, which would effectively signal an end to the State’s control over reserving the cane area of the sugar mills and fixing the procurement price for the growers. At his meeting with the Chairman of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council,...

-The Hindu Business Line India can learn from Brazil’s Bolsa Familia and China’s Gansu Programme to make refinements to its MGNREGA scheme. The development experiences of Brazil, China and India provide a valuable opportunity to understand the relationship between growth and distribution over periods of high rates of growth. The growth story playing out in all the three emerging economies have resulted in large regional as well as spatial inequalities, between rural and...

-The Hindu Stereotypical government policies and global approaches persist in family planning programmes. Urmila is a 40-year-old domestic worker in western Uttar Pradesh. The mother of six children, all girls, she is now pregnant again and is keen on carrying on with the pregnancy. Her husband is unemployed and is an alcoholic. His relatives have assured her that they will help her to bring up the child and have also hinted...