-Moneylife Activists have urged the CM to fill up the posts immediately as RTI applications to various state government departments remain unanswered RTI activists and citizens are perturbed that Maharashtra chief minister Prithviraj Chavan has been dilly-dallying with the appointments to the vacant posts in the state information commission, and have said that he needs to be proactive in the implementation of Right to Information (RTI) Act and address the problems that...

The wages under the government's flagship rural employment scheme have risen following adjustments for price rise, creating apprehension that this may add to the inflationary pressures by making farming more expensive.  The government had early last year benchmarked wages under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act to retail inflation to ensure a real wage of Rs 100 a day to workers seeking employment under the scheme.  Under the first such...

The Supreme Court today refused to direct the Nanavati Commission to summon and question Narendra Modi about his alleged role in the 2002 riots, saying that doing so would amount to “judicial overreach”. The court’s decision followed an embarrassing gaffe it had made in the case a week ago, and would come as a relief to the Gujarat chief minister. Ironically enough, the two-judge bench had sought to issue notices on the...

Ashish Bose is a veteran demographer whose expertise in analysing population data persuaded the former Prime Minister, the late Rajiv Gandhi to make him an advisor on issues ranging from urbanisation to poverty alleviation. He is best known for coining the term Bimaru (shorthand for Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh) for states with the worst socio-economic indicators. An author of 24 books, he is now working on a...

The ongoing debate over the incidence of poverty in India, often assuming surreal proportions, shows that there is indeed a ‘philosophy of poverty’ guiding current economic reforms. The loot of our country’s resources that is taking place both through these reforms, which continue to widen gross inequalities, and through the open plunder of our resources for private gain — as reflected in the series of mega scams — require the legitimacy...