The official line is simple. Since we cannot afford to feed all the hungry, there must only be as many hungry as we can afford to feed. There was irony in the timing of the petrol price decontrol order. The decision, which also covered major hikes in diesel and kerosene prices, and affects hundreds of millions of people, came even as Manmohan Singh advised world leaders in Toronto on the need...

GlaxoSmithKline, Merck and Novartis have taken the top three spots again on the Access to Medicine Index, which ranks pharmaceutical companies on how readily they make their products available to the world's poor. It was the second time the Rankings, which were created in 2008, have been issued. This time, 95 per cent of the brand-name companies approached by the Dutch foundation that started the index agreed to provide information;...

C.K.Ramachandran Consultant - governance, institutional reform and rural livelihoods   N.Narayanasamy SAGE New Delhi, India 2009 Pages - 363 Price Rs. 550   This is an exhaustive treatise on Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) which evolved during the 80s and 90s as a reaction to the top-down approach to development. The book traces the evolution of PRA in considerable detail and attempts to distinguish it from several other related streams of participatory approaches some of which have vanished without...

A global survey’s rating of Indian consumers as the greenest in the world, though significant in itself, should be viewed in perspective. In the annual survey carried out by the National Geographic Society and the international polling firm GlobeScan, India topped the Ranking for the eco-friendly consumption pattern of its population for the second year in a row. Brazil has been adjudged second, China third and the US last in...

India has tumbled seven places in the Global Peace Index — a Ranking of the most peaceful nations of the world — thanks largely to the increase in the number of deaths from organized conflicts. The 2010 Ranking of 149 nations places India at 128. New Zealand tops the index as the most peaceful country and war-ravaged Iraq — no surprises here — has earned the distinction as the least...