A rural Indian spending Rs. 22.50 a day would not be considered poor by a Planning Commission whose Deputy Chairman's foreign trips between May and October last year cost a daily average of Rs. 2.02 lakh Pranab Mukherjee's stirring call for austerity tugs at the national tear ducts. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has pleaded for it in the past and watched his flock embrace it creatively. With the Finance Ministry even...

With the elderly likely to constitute a quarter of India's population by 2050, there is need for a publicly-funded, universal scheme that will overcome destitution among the aged India's social security system is woefully inadequate, when compared even to those in third world economies with no higher per capita incomes. Some States in India have fairly comprehensive social security schemes — notably Kerala, also West Bengal and Tamil Nadu — but...

Remote controls are identified as technical devices which are used for various purposes ranging from the launching of space-ships to the monitoring of toy cars. But of late, these devices are being used to direct policies for nation states which are formally sovereign. We speak here of the powerful lobby of international credit rating agencies like Standard and Poor's (S&P), which has just delivered its sermon that India is no longer...

-The United Nations The global employment situation is alarming, says a new United Nations report released today, which also warns that recovery is not expected any time soon. The World of Work Report 2012: Better Jobs for a Better Economy – published by the UN International Labour Organization (ILO) – says that around 50 million jobs are still missing compared to the situation that existed before the global economic crisis. It also warns...

-IANS The International Labour Organisation (ILO) Monday warned of the emergence of a global jobs crisis, noting that around 50 million jobs that were lost during the financial crisis are still missing today. Despite signs that economic growth has resumed in some regions, the global employment situation is alarming and shows no sign of recovery in the near future, the ILO said in a report entitled "World of Work Report 2012: Better...