-Frontline In a situation of increasing life expectancy and crumbling traditional support structures, a universal social pension scheme that does not rely on contribution by a person or an employer can help the elderly. INDIA prides itself on being a "young" society, likely to benefit from a demographic dividend as children and young people move into working age groups over the next decade. This optimistic view assumes that society will be able...

-Outlook New York: Founder of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Arvind Kejriwal is among Foreign Policy magazine's leading Global Thinkers of 2013, a list of 100 people who have made "measurable difference" and are "pushing the boundaries of the possible". Activists Urvashi Butalia and Kavita Krishnan have also made it to the list that has been topped by US intelligence whistleblower Edward Snowden. Kejriwal, 45, who figures on the 32nd spot, is a...

-The Telegraph Lucknow: The laptops are piling, the classrooms are empty. The Akhilesh Yadav-led Uttar Pradesh government today indicated it was ready to shift gears and focus on tackling alarming school dropout rates after being slammed over misplaced priorities and cash-guzzling populist schemes like free laptops. The issue was raised by a Congress legislator, Pramod Tiwari. BJP MLAs soon followed suit, drawing the government’s attention to the large number of dropouts at the...

-Frontline Childhood TB has been neglected for decades, but in the past few years the WHO has begun to realise its real impact in terms of incidence, prevalence and mortality. THE number of annual new tuberculosis (TB) cases in India has been nearly 2.2 million for the past couple of years. Many of these infected people would have been in contact with children aged under five years before being diagnosed and,...

-The Indian Express India faces no risk of violating its commitments under WTO The Indian delegation, led by commerce minister Anand Sharma, is approaching the WTO Ministerial in Bali with a ‘begging bowl'. The government has agreed to the so-called ‘peace clause'-a euphemism for not taking any penal action for violating commitments under Agreement on Agriculture (AoA)-proposed by WTO Director General but with the caveat that this will remain in place until...