The disclosure by the Centre for Science and Environment that 11 of the 12 leading brands of honey sold in India contain high levels of harmful antibiotics should make us acknowledge our failure to evolve and enforce environmental and health standards. Similar disclosures were made about pesticides in soft drinks and coliform bacteria in 'safe' bottled water. More distressing is the documentation since the 1980s of high content of pesticides...

In our frantic search for solutions to our water crisis, we tend to overlook the self-evident relationship between water, food, and energy. It is still not too late. As my colleague Tony Allan, a Stockholm Water Prize laureate says so pithily, the three are the corners of a triangle with politics and emotion at its center. About 80 percent of accessible freshwater in Asia is used for agriculture; the rest...

An inter-ministerial panel will decide on the contentious issue of opening organised retail to foreign investment after examining stakeholder feedback to the discussion paper put out by the government. “A panel of six ministries was constituted on September 27, which will be chaired by Kewal Ram, senior economic advisor in the consumer affairs ministry,” a government official told ET. The committee will have representation from the department of industrial policy and promotion,...

As the common man continues to reel under the spiraling rise in prices of essential commodities especially key food items and vegetables the forever-rising food inflation is posing a serious challenge to policy makers. Though top government officials, including the Finance Minister and the Chairman of the Planning Commission have repeatedly assured that the food prices will soon stop rising, in reality it has gone the other way.   The rising spree...

“India is Shining” in many ways, but the major hiccups in the run up to the Commonwealth Games (CWG), which opened on October 3 in New Delhi, highlight India's serious problems. Despite the colourful display of India's arts and culture at the grand opening ceremony, the frantic last minute interventions —including enlisting the Army (who did a remarkable job) to help with the final preparations — reveal the gross inefficiencies...