Amid concerns that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) could tighten its monetary policy in January 2010, inflation during October more than doubled to 1.34 per cent, as compared to 0.5 per cent a month earlier, mostly due to the rising cost of essential food items. In the first monthly data released by the government on Saturday, the build-up inflation in the financial year so far was 6.13 per cent...

The Nobel laureate Prof. Amartya Sen said on child domestic workers that “it is not economic poverty but rather political poverty that is depriving children their rights to education and pushing them to labour force. Our actions should aim at attacking this political poverty to bring education to the reach of children and free child domestic workers from the bondage.” The child domestic labour is common and traditional form of...

An ambitious human resource development ministry proposal aimed at ending persistent gaps between allocated and needed funds that plague the midday meal scheme has been rejected by a key finance panel. The Centre’s expenditure finance committee (EFC) has dumped the ministry proposal to tie costs of the meal scheme to fluctuating commodity prices through a special pricing index, The Telegraph has learnt. The EFC’s approval is mandatory for central proposals with...

For a man who will inherit vast tracts of fertile farmland in Punjab, India's grain bowl, Jaswinder Singh made what seemed to him a logical career move -- he took a job with a telecoms company in New Delhi. "I can't go back to the village after an M.B.A. Delhi has more money, better quality of life. The job is more satisfying, and you don't depend on the weather or...

Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia today said the food price inflation would come down by the end of the current fiscal. "food price inflation by the end of the current fiscal would be significantly lower than what it is right now," Ahluwalia said while speaking at the India Economic Summit here. Citing the reason for high food inflation, he said, at the end of a bad monsoon, particularly...