-The Hindu   The Director-General (Expenditure) of the Election Commission of India, P.K. Dash, said on Thursday that an elected legislator could face disqualification as well as criminal proceedings — which could lead to a prison term of six months as well as a fine — if he/she resorts to “paid news” in any form of media during the coming elections to the Punjab Assembly. Mr. Dash, who was chairing a workshop with...

Union Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh has urged Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa to route Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) wage payments through bank accounts, doing away with the practice of cash payment to workers. In a letter to Ms. Jayalalithaa, he said Tamil Nadu could become a trend-setter in seamless transfer of funds through bank and postal accounts of workers and thereby deepen Financial Inclusion in the...

The 11th five-year plan promised the nation “inclusive growth”. It marked a departure from the earlier official position that the “benefits of growth” would automatically “trickle down” to the poor, and that if growth was not actually benefiting the poor, then the reason lay in its not being high enough. The 11th plan, by contrast, conceded that the “benefits of growth” did not automatically “trickle down”, but argued that growth...

An unprecedented economic growth during the last decade has also seen increasing malnutrition, hunger and starvation amongst certain sections of society. India ranks 66 in the Food and Agriculture Organisation’s (FAO’s) World Hunger Index of 88 countries (Inter-national Food Policy Research Institute). More than 200 million people in this country are denied the right to food. One-third of all underweight children (57 million) in the world due to lack of...

-The Indian Express   Reserve Bank of India Governor D Subbarao on Tuesday cautioned that policies — the significant increase in rural wages triggered by the MGNREGS and inflationary implications of the proposed Food Security Bill — aimed at inclusive growth can stoke inflationary pressures at any rate in the short-term. “The need for making growth inclusive is incontestable, but it is important to recognise that policies aimed at inclusion can stoke inflationary...