JAYATI GHOSH-Frontline

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At a shopping mall in Tallinn. A file picture. The erosion of living standards of the population that still has paid jobs are not immediately visible in the centre of the city.-TIMUR NISAMETDINOV/BLOOMBERG NEWS

Tottering along

Estonia, one of the more developed regions of the former Soviet Union, is in the throes of self-inflicted pain in the hope of preserving a certain sel

DALIT WOMEN AT a rally organised by the National Confederation of Dalit Organisations (NACDOR), in New Delhi. A file photograph. The government of Delhi diverted as much as Rs.744 crore over three years to the CWG from funds that were especially earmarked for the Special Component Plans (SCPs) for the Scheduled Castes in Delhi.-S. SUBRAMANIUM

Denying their due

The denial of public resources that are mandated under the Special Component Plan for S.Cs amounts to a huge assault on their basic socio-economic rig

Children in tents pitched near a busy road in New Delhi. Inequality results in slower and less sustainable economic growth and creates health concerns and other social problems.-AMIT BHARGAVA/BLOOMBERG NEWS

Widening gap

A recent UNICEF report points to increasing economic inequalities and suggests that those in power, even in democracies, want it that way.

CONSERVANCY WORKERS CLEANING a drainage channel in Tirunelveli. A file picture. A large number of social practices effectively restrict the economic activity of 'lower caste' and Dalit groups and force them to supply very low wage labour in harsh and usually precarious conditions.-A. SHAIKMOHIDEEN

Bias as base

Capitalism in India, especially its globally integrated variant, has used modes of social discrimination and exclusion to advance itself.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and, behind him, Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia (at a function in New Delhi in this file picture) have made it clear that in their perception the increase in food inflation is because of increased prosperity in general and the success of the governments pro-poor schemes in particular.-RAMESH SHARMA

Malignant growth

The meagre allocations for critical social sector programmes point to a focus on growth for growth's sake, whose consequences can be unsettling.

CASH TRANSFERS THAT allow poor people to buy some food and other essential commodities in private shops will be much less effective in a period of rising prices of such goods. Here, at Pipari village in Uttar Pradesh, a daily-wage labourer feeds her child.-ALTAF QADRI/AP

The cash option

Cash transfers, the latest global development fashion, involve several risks in India, not least the risk of forgetting the need for continuing struct

AT AN AUTOMATED teller machine in Cairo on February 2. More than half the banking system in Egypt is now in private hands.-VICTORIA HAZOU/AP

Economic roots

The upsurge in Egypt is not simply about democracy versus dictatorship. It is also a revolt against a manifestly unjust economic order.

SAJJAD HUSSAIN/AFP

Of margins and the marginalised

The countrywide share of corporate retail in food distribution tripled in the past four years when retail food prices showed the greatest increase.

L.C. Jain. He was pre-eminently a Gandhian.-K. GOPINATHAN

Endless inspiration

L.C. Jain continued to fight for change in every way he could and remained optimistic, despite seemingly unsurmountable obstacles.

Moral elasticity

The stretched notions of what is proper and fitting for the influential elites suggest greater political flux and socio-economic instability in the da

THE MENU DISPLAYED outside a cafe near Leinster House, Dublin, the seat of Ireland's Parliament, reflecting the country's budget crisis, on December 8.-PETER MORRISON/AP

A strange story

The real surprise of the European economic project is the absence of price equalisation across the region.

A bullet train passes through Odawara station in Kanagawa perfecture in Japan in this picture taken in January. The Tokyo mass transit system, despite all its complexity, is awe-inspiring for its smoothness and the relative ease of travel even when frequent changes of line are required to reach a destination.-TOSHIYUKI AIZAWA/BLOOMBERG

Way to go!

Japan's urban mass rapid transport system is a fine example of what can be achieved with a high degree of discipline, politeness and rule-based behavi

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