India’s relative position with respect to the Education Development Index remains poor. There is a lot to do in terms of improving schooling facilities.  According to the ‘EFA Global Monitoring Report 2010’ (UNESCO), India’s rank was 105 among 128 countries. And it continues to figure, along with a bunch of African and one or two Asian countries, such as Pakistan and Bangladesh, in the group of countries with a low...

A revolution in small farm management is essential to revitalise the country’s agriculture sector, according to noted agriculture scientist M.S. Swaminathan. Corporate farming would be detrimental to India. Farming was the largest private sector enterprise in the country, and any bid to take away land from the farmer would be counter-productive. But a symbiotic relationship between farmers and industry, resulting in a win-win situation for both, would be good, he...

Five years after the massive Indian Ocean tsunami, which left a devastating trail of death and destruction, millions of people have benefited from the influx of aid by rebuilding stronger infrastructure, social services and disaster warning systems than existed before the catastrophe, according to the United Nations agencies at the core of the recovery effort. The largest emergency relief response in history was prompted by the earthquake off the coast...

I have just returned after performing at the climate circus in Copenhagen. Like all sensible columnists, I will reserve my remarks on why the outcome was entirely predictable, till after the event! But as I attended this meeting of the Conference of Parties (COP) of the Climate Convention (UNFCCC) after a gap of some six years, a snapshot comparison of then and now may be more useful. The UNFCCC process started...

Member-states of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) on Tuesday agreed to make a separate statement as an entity at the Copenhagen meet on climate change in December. This was decided at the Delhi Statement on Cooperation in Environment that was adopted at the end of the SAARC Ministerial meeting here. Environment Ministers of seven SAARC countries parties participated in the meet while Pakistan was represented by its...