The US Senate is expected to pass the Global Food Security Act, new legislation that would significantly expand the government's commitment to combating hunger worldwide with a broad range of measures and more money, and a special coordinator, or "food czar", to oversee implementation of these provisions across agencies. A proposed new fund would allocate several billion dollars over five years to research and development, to enhance "food security, agriculture productivity,...

While India’s new Right to Education Act seeks to bring free and compulsory education for all children, it seems to short-change them through an unrealistic vision of the private sector’s involvement. In August 2009, the Right to Education Act was passed in the Indian Parliament with no debate, by the fewer than 60 members who happened to be attending the session that day. Not that the Act was an open-and-shut...

The Planning Commission is hopeful of a good growth in the agriculture sector during the XII Plan (2012-17). “The 4-per cent agriculture growth is a good target for the XII Plan, which could not be achieved so far as envisaged in the XI Plan (2007-12),” Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia told journalists here on Thursday. “I think at the end of the XI Plan, our assessment is that agriculture...

Corruption and human rights issues continue to be neglected by companies despite ongoing interest in United Nations-led efforts to ensure ethical corporate conduct, according to the findings of a new survey by a global initiative that seeks to foster responsible business practices. The UN Global Compact surveyed a total of 1,044 businesses in 97 countries, representing nearly 20 per cent of all of the initiative’s participants last year, and the...

The PMO documents gathered using Right To Information Act (RTI) show a manifest collusion between ministers, officials and Dow Chemicals to protect it from the liabilities of Industrial catastrophe of Bhopal. The documents reveal how some of the ministers who have been made part of  the Group of Ministers (GoM) by the Prime Minister have been acting to safeguard the interest of the US corporation in question, which is liable...