Over the past two decades, Maharashtra’s leaders and caretakers have carefully steered it from being India’s most progressive and forward-looking state to lying on the verge of becoming one of India’s most backward.This is no mean achievement. Mumbai, as is well known, contributes close to 40% of the nation’s direct taxes. In 2003-2004, Maharashtra’s net state domestic product was second only to Haryana’s and the gross domestic product was 13%...

Every passing day makes it clear that the proposed food security law may not come by for a while. One report quoting the Planning Commission even suggested that it can be expected only in 2012. This Twelfth Plan (2012-17) launch has support from the concerned dual Ministry of Agriculture as well as Food, Consumer Affairs and Public Distribution. In that eventuality it does mean a surge in food insecurity.A dispassionate...

‘Several interventions for high risk groups have been taken up in Bagalkot' There is an urgent need to involve elected representatives, especially women at the gram panchayat and taluk panchayat levels to conduct awareness programmes on HIV/AIDS, according to Ravi Kittur, a social worker and councillor at the ART Centre in Bijapur district hospital. Mr. Kittur attributes high prevalence of HIV/AIDS in a large number of people in Bijapur and Bagalkot districts...

NREGA workers lifted their 47 days long Satyagrah/Dharna after the Center and Rajasthan State governments agreed to their demand wages on basis of Minimum Wages Act 1948. As per the press releas of SR Abhiyan, the struggling organization, on November 11, Mrs Gandhi wrote to the Prime Minister communicating the consensus reached in the NAC meeting on October 23, that workers should be paid minimum wages as notified under the...

Twenty years is a good enough time to assess how countries of the world, irrespective of the economic or political system they follow, have performed in promoting human development. Successive Human Development Reports (HDR), since 1990, have mainstreamed health and education as critical indicators of human progress and contributed to international policy structures. For instance, the Millennium Development Goals, aimed at using international financial resources to reduce global poverty, can...