Mayawati may have demanded reservation for the Muslims in proportion to their population, but the community has little to cheer about during her five years' rule in Uttar Pradesh. An analysis of Muslims' share in employment and education shows how since 2007 the Muslims have fared worse than dalits in UP on the education front. Demolishing the tall claims of the minority concentration districts' programme to smithereens, the study shows...

-The Economic Times   The Planning Commission, under a sustained attack from the Union Cabinet and the National Advisory Council over its affidavit to the Supreme Courtthat claimed that the rural poor can take care of his food, educational and health requirements with 25 a day, is expected to revise its stand on Monday. This follows a meeting between Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh here...

The National Food Security Bill, 2011, designed to make access to food a legal right, is the last chance to convert Gandhiji's vision of a hunger-free India into reality. What Mahatma Gandhi said of the role of food in a human being's life in a 1946 speech at Noakhali, now in Bangladesh, remains the most powerful expression of the importance of making access to food a basic human right. Gandhiji also...

Agriculture specialists convening in Bern to debate the question of how to feed the world have agreed on one thing: a new paradigm is needed. Farming models are breaking down – as witnessed by the suicide of a farmer every half hour in India - and new directions for research in agriculture for development are needed to support the sector and combat global poverty. A joint conference hosted by non-government organisation Swissaid...

Jharkhand has thrown up the sharpest signal of the link between urbanisation and diabetes in a survey covering three states and a Union territory. The study by the Indian Council of Medical Research and collaborating institutions, the first to cover entire states, has shown that 13 people in 100 have diabetes in urban Jharkhand but just three per 100 in the state’s rural areas. Projections from the survey, which has covered Jharkhand,...