The World Wildlife Fund has warned that days are numbered for much of the sensitive Sunderbans eco-system and in 60 years vast tracts of the rare mangrove forests, home to the Bengal tiger, will be inundated by the rising sea. The study, focussed on Sunderbans in bangladesh, says the sea was rising more swiftly than anticipated by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2007 and would rise 11.2 inches...

South Asian nations including India would not be able to eradicate poverty and ensure minimum education for all by 2015, according to a new poverty index to be released next week in Delhi. The Basic Capabilities Index (BCI) 2009 has found that South Asia will get 80 points on the index by 2015, 10 points higher than the present value of 70. India has got 68 points in the index,...

The ministry of personnel has shown a surprising lack of alacrity in prosecuting errant babus In August last year, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was keynote speaker at the annual meeting of India’s premier anti-corruption agency, the CBI. There, addressing officers of the agency and state vigilance bureaus, he made a telling remark, “Our anti-corruption agencies must make the cost of corruption unacceptably high for those indulging in this evil practice.” The prime...

I have just returned after performing at the climate circus in Copenhagen. Like all sensible columnists, I will reserve my remarks on why the outcome was entirely predictable, till after the event! But as I attended this meeting of the Conference of Parties (COP) of the Climate Convention (UNFCCC) after a gap of some six years, a snapshot comparison of then and now may be more useful. The UNFCCC process started...

India will become the world’s most populous country in 2025, surpassing China, where the population will peak one year later because of declining fertility, according to United States Census Bureau projections released Tuesday. The bureau suggests that the projected peak in China, 1.4 billion people, will be lower than previously estimated and that it will occur sooner. With the fertility rate declining to fewer than 1.6 births per woman in this...