-The Hindu Reforms must be part of a continuing agenda. The basic principle guiding reforms must be to create a competitive environment with a stress on efficiency. In many ways the coming decade will be crucial for India as growth is the answer to many of its socio-economic problems The data on national income released recently give a new twist to India's growth story. The most significant change is with respect to...

-Down to Earth For farmers, trust sells more than organic licence A FOOD SAFETY and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) official walked into Restore, an organic food store at Kottivakkam in Chennai. He picked up a packet of rice off the shelf and noticed some bugs in it. "How can you sell groceries with bugs?" he asked. The staff told him their customers buy their goods precisely because of the bugs in...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Inequality in South Asia is much more glaring than what government data shows because standard yardsticks of measuring income don't reveal the true picture, says a World Bank report 'Addressing Inequality in South Asia', released on Tuesday. For instance, the Gini coefficient - the standard measure to gauge income inequality - ranges from 0.28 to 0.40 in this region, suggesting a level of inequality much lower...

-The Hindu The acceptance of inclusion as a concept amongst teachers is weakened by the complexity they encounter in the classrooms when dealing with children from disadvantaged families Let's consider an issue that teachers in our government schools grapple with every day. Every class across the country has a significant proportion of children who are first generation school-goers. They come from severely disadvantaged families. The support at home for such children for...

-The Hindu Business Line To buck migration, the Barefoot College has turned to mothers and grandmothers to light up villages Satabhaya village, in Kendrapada district of Odisha, is barely 65 km from the district headquarters, but it can be called remote by any yardstick. Located inside the Bhitarkanika wildlife sanctuary, it remains deprived of basic facilities such as roads and electricity. Abutted by the Bay of Bengal, the village is the only one...