-The Hindu Court rulings on freebies, elections and caste-based rallies, and the CIC order on political parties are a beginning towards cleansing politics but whether they can achieve the desired result is debatable The slew of judgments from the higher judiciary in the period of just about a month or so has been like manna from heaven on the parched earth of electoral reforms. First, the Supreme Court frowned upon freebies, which...

-The Economic Times Over the last decade the UPA government has tried to reduce poverty by legislating a regime of rights accompanied by the national rural employment guarantee (NREG) programme -spending Rs 1,70,000 crore on this strategy. This strategy would have been fine if the transformation of India from a strong Currency, high growth and low inflation economy to aweak Currency, low growth and high inflation economy had been accompanied by a...

-The World Bank blog "Five years ago, I was no one," said Kunti Devi to me, sitting up straight against the wall of her one-room mud hut in Bara, a small village in India's eastern state of Bihar. "Now, people know me by my own name, not just by the name of my children." I was sitting on the floor, across from Devi, a mother of eight, who belonged to one of...

-The Economic Times India's GDP growth has almost halved from 9.2% in 2010-11 to 5% in 2012-12. Major problems include a high current account deficit, high fiscal deficit, and lack of bank credit for small and medium enterprises. All three problems can be mitigated substantially by one single measure - reducing excess food stocks. So say Ashok Gulati and Surabhi Jain, chairman and joint director respectively of the Commission for Agricultural...

-The Hindu MARAKKANAM: In front of one of the burnt houses at Kattayantheru lie a number of charred certificates, including ration cards and other important documents that belong to the members of the Marakkanam Dalit Colony. "We have salvaged whatever we can, but most of us have lost documents including ration cards, mark sheets, birth certificates and death certificates. Many of us whose houses were burnt even lost Currency notes they had...