The University Grants Commission has demanded a four-fold hike in funds allocation in the 12th five-year Plan to create 10 million additional seats in higher educational institutions. The demand has come in spite of the higher education regulator managing to spend only 50 per cent of the Rs 46,449 crore allocated in the 11th Plan three months before the period ends. The UGC has submitted a detailed report to the HRD ministry,...

He was killed on Sunday for not returning Rs. 5,000 at his residence A day after 32-year-old Dalit sugarcane labourer Shahadev Tayad succumbed to burns, the accused Vashisht Dhake who allegedly burnt him was caught by the police on Monday, but the Tayad's family's efforts to come to terms with the loss have just begun. According to the police, Dhake burnt Tayad on January 8 for not returning Rs. 5,000 at his...

Maharashtra teeters on the brink while Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, two key states contributing significantly to grain production, have already declared a drought, potentially exacerbating agrarian distress and adversely impacting food prices. Supply of pulses, sugarcane, oilseeds, soyabean and coarse grain such as bajra and jowar, is likely to be hit, with production in the rabi season, or the winter harvest, set to decline between 25% and more than 40%, compared...

The Bharatiya Janata Party in Karnataka appears to be readying itself for a big fight, and this time it is over the Bhagavad Gita. A statement by Karnataka Chief Minister D V Sadananda Gowda, in which he said that the government was considering introducing the Gita in primary and secondary standards in school has drawn appreciation as well as flak in the state. Vicky Nanjappa reports. The issue had come up...

-The Telegraph   There is no jargon in Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi’s brand of economics — there are only blankets and bicycles and other such mundane things that he feels the poor need. And he even got a nod from a man who has received the Nobel Prize for economics. Speaking at a discussion, flanked by Joseph Eugene Stiglitz, an economics Nobel laureate and Lord Meghnad Desai, professor emeritus at the London School...