In August 2010, the U.N. Secretary General set up a “High-Level Panel on Global Sustainability,” to formulate a “new vision for sustainable growth and prosperity” for the world. Co-chaired by the Presidents of Finland and South Africa, the panel submitted its detailed report in January 2012. The report is under consideration in the Secretary General's office, and will be a key input to the upcoming U.N. Conference on Sustainable Development...

The marginalisation of tribals in the last few decades has been enormous. Tribals have lost out in agriculture, and their forests also stand depleted, writes KD Singh In 2006, the Prime Minister described the Maoist threat as “the single biggest internal security challenge ever faced by the country” and suggested development in insurgency-affected regions as the key remedy. In 2009, the Union Government announced a new nationwide initiative, the ‘Integrated Action...

It needs pensive reflection to understand how an organisation whose name is perhaps the most widely recognised public sector brand across the length and breadth of India could become the target of so much instant anger and contempt in the highest legislative forum of the republic. Krishna Kumar (anhsirk.kumar@gmail.com) teaches education at Delhi University. The cyclone that hit Parliament on 11 and 14 May over the so-called cartoon controversy indicates, among other...

The global economic slowdown may pinch the poor in India. The Planning Commission is redrawing its projections for the 12th five year plan (2012-17) in wake of current global economic situation and could end up scaling down money for welfare schemes. Health, education and rural development are not expected to get the hike they had sought and allocations for some other ministries are likely to fall, prompted by a lower growth. The...

School texts that teach young minds that politics is a contentious and critical but reasonable activity, that it is not merely a set of demands and commands, and that politicians have to be responsive and accountable are naturally disliked by the political class. This is the tone of all the Political Science textbooks of Standards IX-XI brought out after 2006. The nurturing of a culture of critical public opinion seems...