-Outlook As the Manmohan Singh government makes evident its unfriendliness to villages, the nation hurtles towards disaster. It's a danger no one wants to face. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has been trying for years to make us believe that agriculture is a vast marshland in which a huge population is stuck ankle- to neck-deep and it is his duty to rescue them. "Our salvation lies in moving people out of agriculture," he...

-The Times of India New Delhi: The capital's growth in the last decade has overwhelmingly come from the city swallowing up rural areas, newly released census data shows. The number of census towns-essentially newly urbanized villages in the laldora areas-nearly doubled over the last decade, taking the proportion of Delhi's residents who live in these areas to an unprecedented third of the population. Varsha Joshi, director of census operations for Delhi, released...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: The Manmohan Singh government's target of skilling 500 million people by 2022 is grossly inflated and is based on a speech by late management guru CK Prahalad instead of any demographic analysis. The country would actually need only about half that number of trained manpower by then, the government's own think-tank, the Institute of Applied Manpower Research (IAMR), has said in a research paper. The IAMR, housed under...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Congress leadership remains undecided on the ordinance route for National Food Security Bill, with the Cabinet meeting yet to be slated for Friday. Sources said the party is yet to configure how to handle some of its reluctant allies as well as the opposition while contending with the fact that the bill could take anything between 6-9 months before the benefits finally roll out to...

-The Times of India BHOPAL: There is a need for creating positive and empowering opportunities for children living with disabilities. We need to change perception and negative assumptions on disabilities and on people living with disabilities, feels the UNICEF. The State of World's Children 2013 UNICEF's global report focuses this year on the issue of children with disabilities. The report brings out the challenges by children with disabilities. A child with...