-Live Mint Not only have Bihar and Odisha grown faster they have also ensured that benefits accrue to the poorest; in Gujarat, Growth has bypassed the poor Going by logic, the poor in richer states should be better off than their counterparts living in poorer states. This is especially so when the country is seeing a welcome trend: Income Growth in rural areas and poverty reduction has witnessed unprecedented acceleration. Not necessarily. Not...

-Live Mint Difference between average spending in urban and rural areas declined by 0.6 percentage points between 2004-05 and 2011-12 The seven years between 2004-05 and 2011-12 have been among the most prosperous phases India has ever seen. What makes this phase unique is that the gains from high Growth have been more evenly shared between rural and urban India than before. Real rural consumption expenditure grew at an average annual pace...

-The Times of India India must discuss phasing down hydrofluorocarbons which endanger the planet. In September, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Barack Obama agreed to discuss how hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), which are hundreds to thousands of times more potent global warming compounds than carbon dioxide, could be phased down. They agreed, bilaterally and at the G20 summit, to use the expertise and institutions of the Montreal Protocol and report emissions under...

-Institute of Economic Growth This paper focusses on two Indian laws that seek to guarantee socioeconomic rights: the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), an important example of India's recent history of legislation of social and economic rights, and the proposed National Food Security Act (NFSA), currently in Parliament. Various means of democratic politics, including a ten-year old public interest litigation (PIL) in the Supreme Court and public mobilisation through the...

-Reuters The finance minister is finding it harder and harder to meet the government's budget promises and may sweep as much as $15 billion in subsidy costs into next year's accounts to ensure he hits fiscal targets ahead of the Lok Sabha, ministry officials say. Finance minister, P Chidambaram, insists that the fiscal deficit target of 4.8% of GDP for the year to March 31, 2014, is a red line that will...