A courier company in Mumbai shows the way in providing employment for the hearing impaired. IN the milling crowds of Mumbai, they stand apart with their orange T-shirts printed with the name Mirakle Couriers. Every day, during the busy hours of the working week, one sees them on the sidewalks, in public transport and elsewhere with large black bags slung on their shoulders. It would not be enough to say...

Twice every year, between 1981 and 2000, a helicopter would whirr around the hills of the Western Ghats in Kasargod, a district in north Kerala bordering Karnataka, spraying endosulfan over the cashew plantations on the upper reaches. Children would rush out to take a look at the helicopter and the white spray would settle like mist on their heads and on leaves and shimmer in the sunlight. But that’s also...

Many scandals have surfaced recently, which highlight the immaturity of India’s economic development model. India lurched somewhat reluctantly into the economic reform process nearly two decades ago. If China has been on the path for the last 33 years, the fact is that we have been at it for 20 years, too. This is a good a time to assess whether we are making sufficient progress along the many dimensions...

The heat generated by the high food inflation may force the government to go slow, or even drop, some of its key proposals to open up the country's food and fertiliser sectors, experts say. Decontrolling sugar and urea and freeing up some farm exports are some of the proposals the government may not touch in the coming days, they say. The proposal on foreign direct investment in multi-brand retail may also...

The government's biggest welfare programme could see an almost 60 per cent increase in funding. The forthcoming Budget is likely to make a provision of Rs 64,000 crore (Rs 640 billion) for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in 2011-12, against Rs 40,100 crore (Rs 401 billion) in the current fiscal. The huge increase in outlay will be mainly on account of two factors: Linking wages under the scheme with...