-Frontline Despite the negative observations and criticisms, there is a strong case for MGNREGS works to be continued even in States with high per capita incomes. Hisar and Fatehabad: CONTRARY to general opinion, demand for work under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) is high in Haryana. Contrary also to the views in recent discussion papers, one of them commissioned by the Commission for Agricultural Cost and Prices...

-The Economic Times Arvind Panagariya, a professor of Indian economics at Columbia University, hits out at Nobel laureate and Harvard University professor Amartya Sen over his call to confront MPs with the "number of deaths" a delayed Food Security Bill can cause. The former chief economist at the Asian Development Bank counters Sen's argument that it is high social spending that has contributed to the economic growth of Asian economies such...

-The Hindu Business Line   In much of the discussion on the turnaround after the Great Recession, attention has been focused on financial consolidation and the halting return to growth. Far less attention has been paid to the persistence of high and even rising unemployment and its sources. In the desperate search for evidence that the global recession has bottomed out and the recovery has arrived, the story told by the long-term trend...

-The United Nations     While insects can be slimy, cringe-inducing creatures, often squashed on sight by humans, a new book released today by the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) says beetles, wasps and caterpillars are also an unexplored nutrition source that can help address global food insecurity. The book, Edible Insects: future prospects for food and feed security, stresses not just the nutritional value of insects, but also the benefits that insect farming...

-Frontline   But in Modi's Gujarat the difference between development and darkness is all too visible to those who care to see. NARENDRA MODI may have won three consecutive elections and ruled Gujarat for more than a decade after he was posted there almost as a night watchman, to borrow a cricketing expression. He may have mobilised a massive fan following that is shouting to catapult him into the Prime Minister's post,...