-The Christian Sciences Monitor Wealthy Western nations are financially exhausted and unwilling to commit to help fund greener development for poorer nations. Will this week's conference in Rio find any solutions? So what happens if you hold a UN conference on sustainable development, and world leaders make speeches, and sign treaties, and then nothing happens? This, of course, would be absurd. The problem, says Bill Easterly, a development expert at New York University,...

-PTI Indians' money in Swiss banks may have risen for the first time in five years, but they account for a meagre 0.14 per cent of total foreign Wealth deposited there — putting India at 55th place internationally for such funds.  The total overseas funds in Switzerland's banking system stood at 1.53 trillion Swiss francs (about Rs 90 trillion) at the end of 2011, which included 2.18 billion Swiss francs (Rs 12,700...

In Kalyan a Muslim youth Bilal Shaikh was slaped with a non boilable cognizable offense (May 2012) under section 333, after he jumped the traffic signal. He was assaulted brutally by the police for having arguments with them, suffered a fracture in right arm and was in jail for eight days. The policemen who beat him up got released with the non cognizable warrant. Another Muslim youth Mohammad Amir Khan, age...

-The Hindu Left parties for invoking Revenue Recovery Act against Rakshana Steels ‘owned' by YSR's kin With the State government cancelling the Bayyaram iron ore mining lease earlier granted to Rakshana Steels, a company allegedly belonging to former Chief Minister Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy's kin, the demand for recovery of the lost mineral Wealth has gained momentum. An enormous extent of over 1.41 lakh acres of iron-rich areas spread across Bayyaram, Garla and...

Men from subaltern communities must confront the violence that tears apart some of their homes and families The two books under review are quite dissimilar in what they set out to do. Dalit Women Speak Out comprises a detailed review of a set of related studies carried out in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh on the violence endured by Dalit women. It revisits the notion of ‘atrocity' both...