-The Hindu Thiruvananthapuram (Kerala): The government is considering a proposal to exempt stamp duty on agricultural loans issued by commercial banks. Finance Minister K.M. Mani told a meeting of the State Level Bankers Committee (SLBC) here on Monday that a decision on the issue would be taken soon after assessing the financial implications. Pointing to the substantial share of commercial banks in primary sector credit, the last meeting of the SLBC had...

-BBC A survey done earlier this year shows that public facilities in the poorest regions of India have steadily expanded, improving the lives of people there, writes development economist Jean Dreze. Once upon a time, not so long ago, public facilities in the poorest districts of India were few and far between. Most people were left to their own devices and they lived in the shadow of hunger, insecurity and exploitation, with no...

-The Hindu The National Campaign for People's Right to Information (NCPRI) has sought the simultaneous passage of the Lokpal Bill, the Grievance Redress Bill and the Whistleblower Protection Bill, contending that these laws formed a basket of inter-linked measures that constituted the much required accountability regime. Addressing a press conference, the NCPRI's Nikhil Dey, Anjali Bharadwaj and Shekhar Singh said that though the Lokpal Bill was not entirely to their satisfaction and...

-The Telegraph Lucknow: The laptops are piling, the classrooms are empty. The Akhilesh Yadav-led Uttar Pradesh government today indicated it was ready to shift gears and focus on tackling alarming school dropout rates after being slammed over misplaced priorities and cash-guzzling populist schemes like free laptops. The issue was raised by a Congress legislator, Pramod Tiwari. BJP MLAs soon followed suit, drawing the government’s attention to the large number of dropouts at the...

-The Hindu We rarely ask the poor what poverty means to them and what changes in lifestyle would make them poverty-free The idea that poverty is determined, defined and measured by a group of people mostly unaffected by it is an intriguing one. Numerous definitions and studies globally tell us what poverty is, how it is measured - extreme and the moderate (there are categories!). Though surprisingly, none of these definitions has...