Inequality in India is worsening and clearly following the US pattern India is a “relatively low-income inequality country” – to borrow an expression from a World Bank publication – when compared to China or Brazil, but there is no doubt that disparities have been widening of late. Planning Commission officials have admitted that inequality has risen in the first decade of the new millennium, although the factors responsible for it need...

-Economic and Political Weekly   Budget 2012, built yet again at the altar of fiscal fundamentalism, will not convince anybody. In this era of immediate assessment it took just a few minutes for the Union Budget for 2012-13 to be given one or the other negative appellation – “lacklustre”, “anti-growth”, “back to the 1980s”, “without reform” and the like. Such evaluations forget that union budgets have long since ceased to be statements of...

Kin of many slain whistleblowers were present at Anna's fast Coming down heavily on the government, social activist Anna Hazare on Sunday said nothing was being done to protect the whistleblowers who play a crucial role in fighting corruption. Families of several whistleblowers who lost their lives in the fight against corruption Turned up at Mr. Hazare's day-long fast at Jantar Mantar here. Team Anna said at least 15 people who tried to...

-The Telegraph A comment attributed to Sri Sri Ravi Shankar that government schools breed Naxalites has sparked a furore, forcing the spiritual guru to issue a clarification today. Speaking at the 25th anniversary of a private school in Jaipur yesterday, Ravi Shankar had said: “Government ko koi school nahi chalana chahiye. Aksar paya jata hai ki government school se padhe hue bacche hi is tarha naxalvad me hinsa ke marg me chale...

The UPA-II has used the Budget to again play politics with hunger. But it has paid no heed to the ticking time bomb of growing social tensions as 58 million Indians living off agriculTure slide deeper into poverty. The Economic Survey says more than half the population is dependent on a sector whose share in the economy is shrinking. The urban-rural income divide is therefore steadily widening, a tinder box that...