-The Hindu One of the most prominent features of India’s middle-class-driven public culture has been an obsession about our GDP growth rate, and a facile equation of that number with a sense of national achievement or impending arrival into affluence. In media headlines, political speeches, and everyday conversations, the GDP growth rate number — whether it is five per cent or eight per cent or whatever — has become a staple...

-The Hindu How ‘We the People’ came to be the source of authority of the Constitution This is the story of how and why the framers of the Constitution of India deliberately designed a procedural error in the adoption of the new Constitution with a view to severing the seamless transition of legal authority from the British Crown-in-Parliament to the new Republic of India. The deliberate procedural error consisted in a deviation...

-The Times of India An average Indian man's life expectancy (LE) at birth has increased by nearly 15 years in the last 40 years, while an average Indian woman is living over 18 years longer than what she did four decades ago. The world population's life span has gained more than a decade since 1970 - from 56.4 years in 1970 to 67.5 years in 2010 for an average male and from...

-Frontline Farmers protest against the Central clearance for coal bed methane exploration in Mannargudi, Tamil Nadu, as they fear it will devastate agriculture in Tiruvarur and Thanjavur districts.  THE woes of the delta farmers of Tamil Nadu are far from over. While the Cauvery tangle continues unresolved, they fear the proposed multi-crore project for commercial exploration and exploitation of coal bed methane (CBM) in the Mannargudi block of Tiruvarur district will prove...

-DNA India’s already grim sex ratio scenario runs the risk of turning worse with more women than men preferring sons over daughters. Historically women here have longed for the girl child much against the wishes of the men in their lives. But that appears a thing of the past, according to the latest statistics and programme implementation ministry report titled Women and men in India 2012. The October 31, 2012 issue of ministry...