Bhaggu, 65, says he can trace his memory back to when he was five. And he remembers the paradox that’s taunted him since: Of his village — Sohras, in northern Uttar Pradesh — being flooded every year and him having no water to drink. “They (government) distribute food, tarpaulin, kerosene, matchboxes but never made any arrangement for water,” says Bhaggu, a farm worker who goes by one name. “I think no...

VISHAL, the son of a farm labourer in the west Indian state of Maharashtra, is almost four. He should weigh around 16kg (35lb). But scooping him up from the floor costs his nursery teacher, a frail woman in a faded sari, little effort. She slips Vishal’s scrawny legs through two holes cut in the corners of a cloth sack, which she hooks to a weighing scale. The needle stops at...

‘Without electricity, social and economic development is much more difficult.' More than $36 billion a year is needed to ensure that the world's population benefits from access to electricity and clean-burning cooking facilities by 2030, the International Energy Agency said on September 21. In a report prepared for the U.N. Millennium Development Goals meeting in New York, the agency said the goal of eradicating extreme poverty by 2015 would be possible only...

 India bribed 72 Commonwealth countries $100,000 each to get the hosting rights for the scandal-hit 19th edition of the Games which will start in Delhi from October 3-14, a media report claimed. A report in the Daily Telegraph claimed that Delhi pipped Hamilton in the bid after offering huge sums of Money to the 72 Commonwealth countries during the final presentation in Jamaica. The report also said that Australia received...

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday announced Rs.500 crore in assistance to the flood-affected Uttarakhand, a day after Congress president Sonia Gandhi sought a liberal package. The interim assistance will be in addition to the Money given on Tuesday to the State Disaster Response Fund, a release from the Prime Minister's Office said. An inter-ministerial team was constituted to visit the State to assess the damage. Based on its assessment, “further...