-Frontline PESA, which is seen as an enabling law for tribal self-governance, is violated brazenly by both the Union government and State governments in the name of development. SINCE October 2012, the Ministry of Rural Development of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government has apparently been engaged in an exercise to evolve a "National Land Reforms Policy". Over these months, the Ministry wrote to various State governments, highlighting the importance of...

-The Hindu     This demographic potential offers India and its economy an unprecedented edge Every third person in an Indian city today is a youth. In about seven years, the median individual in India will be 29 years, very likely a city-dweller, making it the youngest country in the world. India is set to experience a dynamic transformation as the population burden of the past turns into a demographic dividend, but the benefits...

-Bloomberg The corpse of Indian farmer Bengali Singh burned to ash atop a blazing funeral pyre on the banks of the river Ganges in 2006. Five years later, the dead man was recorded as being paid by India's $33 billion rural jobs program to dig an irrigation canal in Jharkhand state. Officials in his village and the surrounding region used at least 500 identities, including those of Singh, a disabled child of...

-The Indian Express The 612 Indians on the list of those who have invested in tax havens such as the British Virgin Islands include two MPs, a former royal and top industrialists. RITU SARIN puts together details of 20 among them SONU LALCHAND MIRCHANDANI Mirchandani is the founder of popular consumer electronics firm Onida. Mirchandani and his wife, Soni, opened a BVI company called Strong Wing Overseas Ltd in 2006 with an authorised...

-The Indian Express No country has ever achieved prosperity without engaging with science and technology (S&T). The ascent of the West and its global domination owes much to its prowess in S&T. In Asia, Japan and South Korea and more recently China have taken the highway to prosperity by mastering technology and effectively dealing with complexity. Chinese economist Justin Yufi Lin in his book The Quest for Prosperity has argued that...