The philosophy of self-aggrandisement defies social logic. Seven leading banks in the United States of America had last year incurred an aggregate loss of $82 billion; the chief executive officers of these banks nonetheless claimed and collected annual bonus to the extent of $38 billion. The economy might lie in ruins; that did not distract sharks from zooming in on their prey. Our corporate sector has shaped itself in the...

The Centre has approved the first legally tenable import of electronic waste for responsible recycling, angering environmental groups who say millions of kilograms of domestic e-waste is recycled hazardously. The environment and forest ministry has approved the import of 8,000 tonnes of e-waste by Attero Recycling, a company that has set up an integrated recycling plant for safe extraction of metals near Roorkee. India generates nearly 400,000 tonnes of domestic...

The private sector uses bribes to influence public policy, laws and regulations, believe over half of those polled for 2009 Global Corruption Barometer. The Barometer, a global public opinion survey released today by Transparency International (TI), also found that half of respondents expressed a willingness to pay a premium to buy from corruption-free companies. “These results show a public sobered by a financial crisis precipitated by weak regulations and a...

THE LAUNCH of free market liberalisation in 1991 triggered widespread prosperity for the Indian middle classes, making them the showpiece of India’s muchfêted economic boom. But little has ever changed for the bulk of the country’s poor, hundreds of millions of who continue to barely scrape through from day to day, doomed to extreme poverty and, consequently, malnutrition, disease and death. For decades, many among these millions have survived, however...

KEY TRENDS    • According to The State of the World's Children 2019 report, the proportion of children under 5 years who are either stunted, wasted or overweight was 54 percent for India in 2015, 49 percent for Afganistan, 46 percent for Bangladesh in 2014, 43 percent for Nepal in 2016, 43 percent for Pakistan in 2018, 40 percent for Bhutan in 2010, 32 percent for Maldives in 2009, 28 percent for Sri Lanka and 50...