The minister for human resource development, Kapil Sibal, is a man in a hurry. His haste would be welcome, if the government’s proposals for higher education were not so scandalous. Amazingly, despite a few distinguished voices of dissent, there has been no national debate on the United Progressive Alliance government’s plans. Existing state and Central universities, likely to be worst affected by the broom of change, seem reconciled to their...

THE LAUNCH of free market liberalisation in 1991 triggered widespread prosperity for the Indian middle classes, making them the showpiece of India’s muchfêted economic boom. But little has ever changed for the bulk of the country’s poor, hundreds of millions of who continue to barely scrape through from day to day, doomed to extreme poverty and, consequently, malnutrition, disease and death. For decades, many among these millions have survived, however...

KEY TRENDS   • During 2014-15, while procurement of foodgrains (rice and wheat) increased from 56.9 million tonnes to 60.2 million tonnes, offtake of foodgrains (rice and wheat) from the PDS decreased from 59.8 million tonnes to 55.9 million tonnes. Despite increased availability in the PDS and prevalence of high inflation in foodgrains, dependence on the PDS is reducing, suggesting that there may be issues of availability, timely availability and quality of the PDS foodgrains...