-The Financial Express World Bank's latest data suggests realisation of millenium development goals may not be far off. Reduction of poverty and hence, how it is measured, has long been a contentious political economy issue in India. There is general discomfort every time the headcount ratio of the number of poor, based upon an accepted methodology recommended by an expert committee, declines; this then triggers a process to revisit known issues by...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: On February 5, 2013, a Supreme Court bench, angry over 1.7 lakh missing children and the government's apathy towards the issue, had remarked: "Nobody seems to care about missing children. This is the irony." Close to one and a half years later, government data show over 1.5 lakh more children have gone missing, and the situation remains the same with an average of 45% of them...

-BBC India's cabinet has approved a bill to allow children over 16 to be tried as adults for crimes like rape and murder. The move follows calls for stricter punishment for juveniles after a 17-year-old was among those convicted of gang rape and murder in Delhi in 2012. At present, juvenile courts can jail those under 18 for at most three years. Under the bill, minors convicted in adult courts would face longer jail...

-Live Mint Narendra Modi is set to form a panel to assess how to overhaul the 50 year-old Food Corporation of India, say sources About thirty miles from New Delhi, a stray dog walks among sacks of wheat rotting in a field. The grain is part of more than 3 million tonnes that India stores in the open exposed to pests and damp, enough to feed Kenya. Simple plastic sheets at the site in...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: During poll season, every political party's heart beats for the farmer. While AAP's Arvind Kejriwal brought out figures of farmer suicides in Gujarat, Narendra Modi repeatedly lamented about farmer suicides under UPA regime. However, a look at government data on farmer suicides since 1995 to 2012 shows that no party has succeeded in putting a stop to this scourge. In fact, in its previous stint in...