-The Hindu Chennai: Several leading economists have appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to continue with the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act amid apprehensions that the government might restrict the programme and not offer it adequate support. In a letter to Mr. Modi, Dilip Abreu, Pranab Bardhan, V. Bhaskar, Ashwini Deshpande, Jean Dreze, Maitreesh Ghatak, Jayati Ghosh, Dilip Mookherjee, R. Nagaraj, Debraj Ray and others argued that despite numerous hurdles,...

-The Hindu Traditional hierarchies are too deeply entrenched to be reversed through one single measure; they need a concerted push, backed by strong will from different segments of society, including, but not confined to, politicians The rise of Other Backward Classes (OBC) and Dalit-Adivasi leaders in the political sphere is celebrated as India's "silent revolution." At the national level, this phenomenon has been especially marked since the early 1990s, leading to comments...

-The Hindu Caste might be cast in stone judging from the way the dominant discourse gets conducted in India “Caste is the most overwhelming factor in Indian life. Those who deny it in principle also accept it in practice. Life moves within the frontiers of caste and cultured men speak in soft tones against the system of caste, while its rejection in action just does not occur to them...” Socialist thinker Ram...