-The Times of India   Inequality in earnings has doubled in India over the last two decades, making it the worst performer on this count of all emerging economies. The top 10% of wage earners now make 12 times more than the bottom 10%, up from a ratio of six in the 1990s. Moreover, wages are not smoothly spread out even through the middle of the distribution. The top 10% of earners make...

-The Times of India   The US continues to be the biggest donor for Indian NGOs, contributing a little less than one-third of the total Rs 10,337 crore received by various non-profit voluntary organizations in 2009-10. The latest statistics for the year 2009-10, disclosed by the home ministry in Parliament last week, showed that Germany took second spot, replacing UK which has traditionally been just behind the US in the list of donors...

-The Telegraph    The text prepared for negotiations at the Durban global climate-change conference, where high-level discussions begin on Monday, is riddled with disagreements. The 131-page text, prepared by officials from the various governments, was released late on Saturday. It is full of brackets, The Telegraph has found, which means that some country or the other has not agreed to what has been written within the bracketed area. It’s clear that the 190-odd participating...

When psychologists identified the phenomenon of cognitive dissonance — the ability to believe two contradictory things at the same time — they might have been describing the world of international climate change negotiations. Only this month, two authoritative international agencies have pointed out that the world has only a few years left in which to begin taking sufficient action to combat dangerous global warming. The United Nations Environment Programme's Bridging the Emissions...

-PTI   The United Nations has warned that the world is on the brink of another recession, projecting that global economic growth will slow down further in 2012 and even emerging powerhouses like India and China, which led the recovery last time, will get bogged down.  The UN 'World Economic Situation and Prospects 2012' report has cut the global growth forecast for next year to 2.6 per cent from 4 per cent in...