-The Hindu The pursuit of full employment of labour cannot primarily rely on domestic private investment, much less FDI. Only public investment will steady us in the long run. We are increasingly told that the inflow of capital — particularly the foreign direct investment (FDI) variety — increases employment levels and contributes to economic growth. In a rare interview given to The Wall Street Journal in May, Prime Minister Narendra Modi reinforced...

Access to land and its resources is important since it determines the extent of poverty and deprivation one faces. Historically tribal populations and other traditional forest dwellers did not enjoy any legal entitlement such as ownership rights or user rights of the forest lands where they had been living since ages, both communally and individually. The Forest Rights Act (FRA) is, thus, seen as a progressive legislation that attempted to...

-Outlook A crusader for Dalit rights, Bezwada Wilson, on reclaiming for the Dalits a life of human dignity in a structurally apathetic society. On many occasions, the Ramon Magsaysay Award has been bestowed on individuals of various ilks and ideological persuasions. For the first time, perhaps, it speaks to an issue that touches the lives of millions of people because an award for Bezwada Wilson (50) is an international acknowledgement of the...

-PTI The rise in wholesale prices may provide partial relief to manufacturers and producers, although it brings bad news for household budgets of consumers. Experts and industry said kharif sowing trends indicate cooling of food inflation in the coming months, even as chances of a rate cut in the near-term are low, given the rise in WPI and retail inflation. Wholesale inflation soared to a 23-month high of 3.55 per cent in July...

Rising prices of dal: How to deal with it? The 68th session of the United Nations General Assembly declared 2016 as the International Year of Pulses. In India, however, ordinary citizens are under enormous duress due to the skyrocketing prices of dal/ lentils since the last one year. The website of Price Monitoring Cell of the Department of Consumer Affairs shows that dal prices varied across places. For example, the...