-The Times of India A significant part of the Manmohan Singh government's political agenda for the 2014 election looks set to sail through Parliament with an all-party meeting on Thursday putting its seal of approval on a contentious bill on land acquisition that enhances compensation for farmers. The government countered criticism that the bill's provisions make land acquisition more time consuming while pushing up costs, but all major political parties seemed...

-The Wall Street Journal Blog The world's poorest people are now concentrated most heavily in Sub-Saharan Africa after China's huge leap in pulling its citizens out of extreme poverty in recent decades, according to new estimates released Wednesday by the World Bank. About 1.2 billion people in the world lived in extreme poverty in 2010, subsisting on less than $1.25 a day. That's down from 1.9 billion three decades ago despite a...

-The Times of India The humble elector's photo identity card - commonly called voter EPIC - is getting a sleek makeover. The laminated paper cutout, with a rather grainy black and white photograph, is set to transform into a shiny, plastic card with a colour photo of the voter, just like a driving licence. "The plastic card will be more aesthetic and durable. It, will, however, not be a smartcard like the...

-The Hindu     This demographic potential offers India and its economy an unprecedented edge Every third person in an Indian city today is a youth. In about seven years, the median individual in India will be 29 years, very likely a city-dweller, making it the youngest country in the world. India is set to experience a dynamic transformation as the population burden of the past turns into a demographic dividend, but the benefits...

-The Indian Express Bangalore: An analysis of usage of funds under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) programme in 156 of the assembly constituencies in Karnataka, which is headed for elections next month, has revealed a continuous decline over the last three years on several parameters, such as average expenditure per constituency, percentage of households employed and average daily wages. The analysis by the IndiaGoverns Research Institute, an NGO,...