-The Times of India Everyone agrees that India needs to deliver social protection to the aam admi; the forthcoming Food Security Bill is one such attempt. Everyone also agrees that the government service delivery pipelines are riddled with leakages and largescale corruption. Direct cash transfers have been proposed as a way to remedy this defective system. However, as could be expected, the debate has become polarised, with one side believing that cash...

-The Times of India Rising food prices during 2010-11 may have pushed three million Bangladeshis into poverty, and kept eight million Indians from getting out of poverty bracket, finds a UN report released on Thursday. In Asia and Pacific region, food inflation pushed nearly four million people into poverty. The UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific ( ESCAP) report on regional cooperation for inclusive and sustainable development says...

-The Economist Growing inequality is one of the biggest social, economic and political challenges of our time. But it is not inevitable, says Zanny Minton Beddoes IN 1889, AT the height of America’s first Gilded Age, George Vanderbilt II, grandson of the original railway magnate, set out to build a country estate in the Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina. He hired the most prominent architect of the time, toured the chateaux...

-The Telegraph   Wal-Mart Stores Inc — the $446 billion retail behemoth — will be able to open stores in 22 cities across the country after the government notified a press note tonight permitting foreign direct investment up to 51 per cent in multi-brand retailing operations. The press note — which contained clauses that were not spelt out in the controversial press release issued last Friday after the cabinet formally cleared the proposal...

Direct cash transfers or food coupons should be used by the government to provide services to the poor, says Farzana Afridi, Assistant Professor, Economics and Planning Unit, Indian Statistical Institute, New Delhi. Afridi, who obtained her PhD in economics from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and an MA in economics from the Delhi School of Economics, says that although the Mid Day Meal Programme is having a substantial effect, the...