The Supreme Court on Friday appeared doubtful about pressing the government to give cash “incentives” under a centrally sponsored scheme to poor women pregnant from child marriages, saying this may be seen as “encouraging” the social crime. “If Government of India gives incentives, will it not mean that it is encouraging child marriages.... We cannot give approval to child marriages,” a Bench of Justices Dalveer Bhandari and Deepak Verma observed. The...

-The Business Standard A panel headed by Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia has advocated the use of unique identification numbers to plug loopholes in the public distribution system (PDS). The working group on PDS reforms, which finalised its draft report today, has also suggested a nationwide computerised system for tracking transportation and distribution of PDS items. “We have approved the draft report and will give it to the Prime Minister...

-The Business Standard   Indian economy has been on a sustained growth path, but Indians are still spending a major chunk of their expenditure on food items. Per capita consumption expenditure in a month was 88 per cent more in case of urban India compared to rural India during 2009-10, a trend which was more or less five years ago, according to the latest figures on consumption expenditure. Per capita expenditure on consumption for...

The mid-term appraisal of the rural development programmes during the ongoing 11th Five-Year Plan points out several holes in the implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in Uttar Pradesh. This not only reaffirms the public perception of poor performance of UP, but also sets aside the defence put up against scathing criticism of her government by chief minister Mayawati time and again. The development has come...

  Can we agree in this country on a floor of human dignity below which we will not allow any human being to fall? No child, woman or man in this land will sleep hungry. No person shall be forced to sleep under the open sky. No parent shall send their child out to work instead of to school. And no one shall die because they cannot afford the cost of...