Poor count

Defining poverty is crucial to make the food security bill effective

Urban villages - an oxymoron?

Urbanisation in developing countries is marked by large increases in population and has consequences such as sprawl. As a physical phenomenon, …

Positive partnership

Will the budget create a bang?

The 2015-16 Union budget will declare Modi government's development agenda

Ready for guillotining?

Heads without tails

Walk the village talk

After raising the political profile of village councils, government wants to downsize them

Planning Commission's new toilets: lessons for us

A Query For Kaushik Basu

The waste conundrum

An experiment of decentralized solid, liquid and energy management in a Delhi colony is unique because the efficient functioning of a well …

New-look farming fumbles to an erratic start

The Planning Commission is embarking on a new approach to agriculture planning. But state governments and the finance ministry are reluctant to …

Community welfare works as a contraceptive

In Pakistan, they are controlling population growth by raising the living standards of local communities through Pasbaan, the social …

Government is a loss-making proposition

Shut it down

US, China count their poor afresh. India looks away

The poverty quibble

Government claims a huge drop in poverty numbers but critical indicators—health, malnutrition and wages—continue to be grim. So how …

Blinded by figures

By 2010, the world's population will have gone up to 6 billion. But at the recent New York meeting on population and development, counting heads …

Time for an overhaul

Having served the country for more than a century and a half, the Indian Railways has taken apathy in its stride. Politicians’ whims, and …

Is pregnancy a disease?

The development of birth-control methods that use the body's immune system may be more convenient than condoms and pills. But several groups …

Importing Disaster

Employment schemes fail to ease rural poverty

The government's employment generation schemes, laudable though they may be, have yet to achieve their goals. Not involving intended …

Violent homecoming

10,000 families from Delhi's Yamuna Pushta slums were 'resettled' in Bawana this March. NIDHI JAMWAL went to meet them

Greening a state

Himachal Pradesh chief minister has broken all bureaucratic shackles and initiated eco-friendly programmes in the state

Only plans, no integration

Experiments with truth

Innovative science teaching scheme relegated to supplementary status

Fruits of doing nothing

Two young farmers of Karnataka prosper by overcoming tiller instinct