The Indian economy is picking up and should be able to expand at eight to nine per cent. It is high time that the government initiates a universal public distribution system covering at least the essential commodities. Incomes of the rich will go up and India will be a major player in the world when it revives. But the bulk of the population, about 70 per cent, will remain poor with...

This has been a hot week for climate talks. The two laggards, China and the US, both departed from their no commitment stand to boldly announce the following: the US to reduce its carbon emissions by 17 per cent over 2005 levels, and China to reduce the intensity (CO2 emissions per unit of output) by 40-45 percent. Europe has already promised a 40 per cent cut in per capita terms....

AT THE recent food summit in Rome, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva donned a pair of bright-red boxing gloves labelled “Hunger Free” and waved to the cameras. They were his prize—if that is the right term—for Brazil’s success in topping a league table drawn up by ActionAid, a British charity, of countries that have done most to reduce hunger*. The occasion was a stunt, of course, but had a...

The rural population is at present estimated at 85 crores. Ten per cent of the households are completely landless. Another 52 per cent have holdings of less than 0.2 hectare. The per capita agricultural land in the rural areas has come down to 0.12 hectare. According to the National Sample Survey, the annual income of an agricultural household from farming is less than Rs 12,000 and from all sources it...

International environmental activist group Greenpeace has released a report, Still Waiting, which reveals that despite growth in electricity generation and increasing carbon emissions, India's rural poor continue to be deprived of electricity. The report challenges the government's energy model and recommends a decentralised energy mix as a solution to overcome social injustice and mitigate climate change. The report compares the electricity supply scenarios in rural and urban areas of five states...