Despite its slackening industry, the common perception of West Bengal as a backward state has little substance when one looks at the facts. Most of us are conditioned to view economic development in terms of industrialisation. While industrialisation is essential for economic transformation, it is not as if economic growth is not possible without it. The sectoral structure of India's gross domestic product (GDP) and its slow transformation makes a good...

One farmer was killed and several others, including some policemen, were injured on Friday when protesting farmers clashed with the police in Allahabad district. The farmers were holding a protest demanding enhanced compensation for their land which has been acquired by the government for building a 1320 MW power plant at Karchana. Enraged over the death, hundreds of farmers indulged in stone throwing and set ablaze several police vehicles and squatted on...

Even though the Central Government agreed to link the wages paid under MG-NREGA to the Consumer Price Index for Agricultural Labourers (CPIAL), it shied away from paying statutory minimum wages in various states of India. Their logic for this: Lack of clarity on who will bear the extra financial burden—the Centre or the states? A letter from the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to UPA and NAC Chairperson Sonia Gandhi dated 31...

To promote organic farming in Uttar Pradesh, industry body Assocham has decided to adopt five districts in the state. “The Assocham has decided to develop five districts in UP as organic districts and a delegation of the association will soon meet chief minister Mayawati in this regard,” its general secretary D S Rawat told PTI. He said under the plan, training will be imparted to farmers of these districts, besides promoting medium...

The need for ensuring food security for the poor is indisputable. However, the means to do so have to be practical and fiscally sustainable. That is what the prime minister’s economic advisory council Chairman C Rangarajan and a group headed by him, which looked into the proposed food security law, seem to think. Most of the points raised by this panel about the recommendations of the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory...