Unlike earthquakes, which can neither be predicted nor prevented, floods are both predictable and, to a large extent, preventable. The country has an elaborate, country-wide flood warning system in place, with two well-equipped central agencies — the India Meteorological Department (IMD) and the Central Water Commission — charged with this task. Despite this, the receding monsoon has caused devastating floods in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra, killing hundreds of people...

The 2009 Human Development Report (HDR), released simultaneously across the world on Monday, makes a strong case for removing barriers to migration within and across borders, arguing that human movement had brought perceptible all-round benefits and held the potential to improve the lives of millions of poor and low-skilled people. Released jointly here by Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia and United Nations Resident Coordinator Patrice Coeur-Bizot, the...

The release of the United Nations’ 2009 Human Development Report is likely to start many much-needed conversations. The report, which is produced annually by the United Nations Development Programme or UNDP, is generally scrutinised for its “rankings” — in which countries’ relative positions in terms of how well they support individual development are ranked. Much will be made of India’s relative fall in the rankings — and, possibly, of China’s...

This is a statement sent in by V.R. Krishna Iyer, a former Judge of the Supreme Court, who is based in Kochi: Some of the provisions of the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) that India recently signed with the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) will weaken India’s, and specifically Kerala’s, rubber sector because Malaysia and a few other countries that are a part of the ASEAN will flood the...

Will the Congress-NCP gain from a multiplicity of fronts which could dissipate the anti-Congress vote? Or will the Shiv Sena-BJP benefit from the Third Front’s cutting into the Congress-NCP vote?  Whatever the failings of Maharashtra’s political class, and these are many, a lack of optimism is not among them. Even after the last date for the withdrawal of nominations to the Assembly elections, there are more fronts, real and imagined,...