A full decade ago, Chandrababu Naidu made a point about the quick issuance of driving licences, and easy digital access to land records and house tax calculations — which he showcased to Bill Clinton when the then US president came visiting. Since then, all of Karnataka has digitised its land records through the Bhoomi project that now has a database on 20 million land holdings. Other states have similar projects....

With the frequency and severity of droughts likely to increase due to climate change, more than 60 scientists from all the world’s regions are meeting at a United Nations-backed conference in the United States this week to draw up guidelines for early warning systems that could save countless lives. “Early warning systems for drought allow individuals and communities to act in sufficient time to reduce the possibility of loss of...

CITIES MAKE one simple promise to newcomers: Sacrifice yourself to me and your children shall prosper. This promise drew Ahmed Raza, a small-time wrestler from an Uttar Pradesh village and millions like him to the capital of newly-independent India. Raza kept his part of the bargain, yet half a century later, his daughter was pushed out of the city her father helped build, the only home she has known. “I...

In my July 2002 column and the preface to the revised and abridged version of my 1988 book, The Hindu Equilibrium, I noted the astonishing post-modern turn in Indian history, whose canonical book Imagining India by RB Inden claimed that caste was an invention of the colonial British Raj. This ran contrary to the central theme of my book that the caste system arose in ancient India in the Indo...

Demonstrates very high levels of social capital, but overall ranking brought down by low levels of education, internal security and health LONDON, October 26, 2009 – The third edition of the Legatum Prosperity Index, published on 26 October, 2009 ranks 104 countries (covering 90% of the world’s population), based on a definition of prosperity that combines economic growth together with measures of happiness and quality of life. According to this year’s Legatum...