-The Guardian A landmark bill to make the right to food a legal entitlement is mired in controversy over its failure to address a flawed public food distribution system, misplaced priorities and exclusions India has an over abundance of food grains stocked in warehouses, yet millions of India's poor are left without food. Development practitioners and NGOs are in favour of disbanding the current food security system, the public distribution system (PDS),...

-The Telegraph Kolkata: Two books by celebrated economists have set the stage for an absorbing growth battle. Columbia University professor Jagdish Bhagwati and Nobel laureate Amartya Sen want the same end - a better India - but the means they prescribe sound different. If Bhagwati prescribes economic growth led by the markets and overseen and encouraged by liberal state policies, Sen believes growth cannot be an end in itself without government effort to...

-The Times of India LUCKNOW: In a state infamous for malnutrition, one out of five teens going to private schools is either overweight or obese. This has been revealed in a study conducted by National Diabetes, Obesity and Cholesterol Foundation (N-DOC). The study covered more than 49,000 school children in eight cities, including 23,006 children in Lucknow, Agra and Allahabad. The other cities were New Delhi, Jaipur, Mumbai, Dehradun and Pantnagar. The...

-The Indian Express Why the proposed national minimum wage is the wrong answer to questions of unemployment and poverty The recent national labour conference - a trade union love fest with little real employer participation - demanded a national minimum wage. The trade union demand is a predictable positioning of narrow self-interest as national interest but the government's acceptance of their demand is unfair, delusional and economically stupid. Unfair, because it pampers a...

-The Hindu Whichever way one looks at the data, there is nothing much to crow about the 68th round of survey Whichever way one looks at the key indicators of employment and unemployment released by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) recently, there is nothing much to crow about in inferences that can be drawn from the data collected in the 68th round of survey conducted during the period July 2011 to...