Amid policy battles over food production, energy resources and economic decline, one untapped natural resource that is guaranteed to boost production on a global scale has been stubbornly overlooked – the power of women in the labour force. According to the World Bank's 2012 World Development Report (WDR) "Gender Equality and Development", ensuring equal access for women farmers would increase maize yields by 11 to 16 percent in Malawi and 17...

-The Times of India   The finance ministry is devising a voluntary tax disclosure scheme that could provide amnesty to people who have stashed unaccounted money in tax havens and other jurisdictions abroad by charging them a "levy". Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee, after a meeting with industry captains recently, activated a committee on black money set up last year to work out a scheme on voluntary disclosure. This scheme will allow corporates and...

I never dreamed I’d ever wave the flag for Indian pharmaceutical companies. But some years ago, I discovered that India provides essential drugs to most of the world’s economically deprived nations. Many of the poorest people in India and Africa could not afford basic drugs if it were not for Indian drug companies. Astonishingly, India is known as the ‘pharmacy to the developing world’ and is something of a hero in...

The foreword — to the Draft National Land Acquisition and Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill 2011 — that says “urbanisation is inevitable” (I.p.1) signifies danger. The Bill, if enacted in its present form, is likely to worsen, and not stop, displacement of tribal, Dalit and other backward communities. The Bill states: “The issue of who acquires land is less important than the process of land acquisition, compensation for land acquired and...

The Centre is set to make it compulsory for 4% of its annual purchases to be made from units run by dalits and tribals in what will be its strongest bait for classes that hold the key to political battles at the Centre and states. A rough estimate of the proposed spending comes to Rs 25,000 crore. Preferential procurement has been an early poll promise of UPA and its delivery...