Microsoft founder Bill Gates has criticised UN agencies like the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) for not doing enough to fight hunger and poverty. “Countries, food agencies and donors aren’t working together in a focused and co-ordinated way to provide the help small farmers need, when they need it,” Gates told the governing council of the IFAD in...

A village wedding in Madhya Pradesh stood out for one reason on Tuesday: the groom had chosen to go ahead with the marriage after Learning the bride had been raped two days earlier. The groom, a Class XII dropout and farmer, told this newspaper that it was his duty to stand by the bride and fight her battle for justice together. “It is a testing time for her for no fault of...

Professor Arjun Appadurai is a Mumbaikar at heart; coming to the city is an annual pilgrimage for this internationa­lly renowned cultural theorist and anthropologist. Appadurai, 62, who studied in Mumbai’s Elphinstone College, is currently Goddard Professor of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University. He has been consultant and advisor to a wide range of public and private foundations such as The Smithsonian. In his seminal work Disjuncture and...

Students of the Women's College in Aligarh Muslim University are waging a bitter struggle for a facility their counterparts in other institutions would take for granted-access to the university's central library. Now, in a concession to these undergraduate women students, AMU has decided provided them online access to the catalogue of books. The varsity says the girls can choose the books which would then be issued and delivered to them. The 100-year-old...

If India is an aspiring society, education is perhaps the quickest vehicle of social mobility. Right to Education (RTE) is a supplyside intervention by the government that will make education cheaper and, in the process, every child will get a chance to be educated. But an approach that focuses on availability of schools, getting children to the classroom and getting them taught by reasonably well-trained teachers is not enough. Retention...