A universal pension scheme for social protection must be part of a broader strategy of economic expansion different from the present neoliberal order. INDIA must be one of the worst countries in the world in terms of not providing even minimal social security for most of its people. This is not just a major failure of the development project in the country – it is also a significant cause of...

Remote controls are identified as technical devices which are used for various purposes ranging from the launching of space-ships to the monitoring of toy cars. But of late, these devices are being used to direct policies for nation states which are formally sovereign. We speak here of the powerful lobby of international credit rating agencies like Standard and Poor's (S&P), which has just delivered its sermon that India is no longer...

-AFP The Asian Development Bank (ADB) Monday urged regional governments to tackle rising income inequality with more urgency, warning any delay could undermine social cohesion and economic growth. Rajat Nag, ADB's managing director-general, said failing to address the problem now could spark further dissatisfaction and lead governments to resort to populist measures to appease their citizens. But populist measures like fuel subsidies and cash grants are taxing on state coffers and could result...

-PTI Milk prices in the national capital and adjoining areas will rise by up to Rs 2 per litre from Monday with two leading suppliers hiking rates, but largest seller Mother Dairy is not increasing rates just yet. Amul and Quality Dairy will increase milk prices from Monday. Mother Dairy and Paras are the other two major milk suppliers in the national capital and its adjoining areas which consume over 115 lakh...

Deng Xiaoping, the architect of modern China, had a sharp, snappy way of putting across what he wanted to say. Some of his eminently quotable quotes include: “It doesn’t matter if the cat is black or white so long as it catches mice” and “Poverty is not socialism. To be rich is glorious”. But there’s another, less well-known and even more controversial quote also attributed to him: “Let some people...