The United Nations labour agency warned in a new study that efforts to eliminate the worst forms of child labour are waning and called for a “re-energized” global campaign to end the scourge. The Global Report on Child Labour, released today, assessed progress made so far and highlighted the challenges that remain if the goal of eliminating the worst forms of child labour by the target date of 2016 is...

The Centre will allocate additional quantities of wheat and rice for ration card holders at rates lower than the minimum support price (MSP), but higher that the issue price, under the public distribution system. The allocations would be made from June. At the same time, the government on Wednesday allowed export of wheat products like rava, sooji and maida, much in demand by expatriate Indians, for a year till March 31,...

Anchekatti Rangaswamy, 19, is shifting large rocks from the acres of barren farm land on the outskirts of Yerraguntla, a village 65 km from Kurnool, the gateway to Andhra Pradesh’s drought-prone Rayalaseema region. The work he does during his summer break from college will make the rocky land, belonging to marginal farmers in the area, slightly more cultivable. And the wages the teenager will earn from the job under the Mahatma...

Could the Great Indian Middle Class be the Great Indian Mythical Class? A proposed new international definition of what constitutes the middle class in a developing country has thrown up a startling conclusion by global standards, India has no middle class. Noted economist Nancy Birdsall, president of the Center for Global Development, has proposed a new definition of the middle class for developing countries in a forthcoming World Bank publication,...

The empowered Group of Ministers on food security, scheduled to meet tomorrow, will have to walk a tightrope in trying to fulfill the ‘food for all’ promise made by the Congress party in its election manifesto. Not only is the government hamstrung by its inability to sustain procurement levels of of 50 million tonnes of foodgrains every year required to feed all poor — below poverty line (BPL) and above...