CELIA ORBOC, a cake-seller in the Philippines, spent her little stipend on a wooden shack, giving her five children a roof over their heads for the first time. In Kyrgyzstan Sharmant Oktomanova spent hers buying flour to feed six children. In Haiti President René Préval praises a dairy co-operative that gives mothers milk and yogurt when their children go to school. These are examples of the world’s favourite new anti-poverty device,...

When flames from an open cooking fire raced through Fida Hussein's shack in northern India, it was a disaster for him and his poverty-stricken family. "We have nothing," said Hussein as he stood in the ruins of his hut through which the sky could be seen between the burnt roof timbers in a remote corner of Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state. India's number of millionaires grew by 51 percent...

With global warming now becoming a permanent fixture in the Indian agriculture landscape, state governments and insurance firms are rushing to provide crop insurance for farmers. Take the case of Rajasthan, which is now looking at extending agri-insurance cover across its 33 districts this year compared to 26 last year. Ditto with Himachal Pradesh and Haryana which would run the Rashtriya Krishi Bima Yojana from this kharif onwards. The cover...

In June 1991, the country embarked on a bold adventure by exposing to market vicissitudes its insulated manufactories, regulated (but pockmarked with soft spots) financial markets and inexperienced economic players. An economy, in those days, was about people, not giant factories and ships with riches. Though successive governments have secured the reformative underpinnings of the liberalisation process, it is to the credit of players in India that the sublime quest...

The US Senate is expected to pass the Global Food Security Act, new legislation that would significantly expand the government's commitment to combating hunger worldwide with a broad range of measures and more money, and a special coordinator, or "food czar", to oversee implementation of these provisions across agencies. A proposed new fund would allocate several billion dollars over five years to research and development, to enhance "food security, agriculture productivity,...