A projected global population of 9 billion concentrated mostly in the developing world and a higher income level alone are enough to put pressure on world’s supply of food grains. But with changes in temperature levels and rainfall pattern beyond an acceptable limit on account of climate change, the pressures on food prices can be expected to enormous. World prices of staple food grains are projected to rise from anywhere...

The year 2010 is almost certain to rank among the three warmest years since the beginning of instrumental climate records in 1850, with the possibility of topping the chart, the United Nations World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reported today. The global combined sea surface and land surface air temperature for January–October is estimated at 0.55 degrees Celsius, plus or minus 0.11 degrees, (0.99 degrees Fahrenheit, plus or minus 0.20 degrees) above the...

This is a real story. In the early 1980s, a senior editor of a national newspaper met a state Congress leader and made a report out of that frank conversation, which made sensational disclosures about the dictatorial way Indira Gandhi was running the Congress at that time. The Congress leader, however, had argued that the entire conversation was off-the-record and, therefore, not meant for publication. The newspaper was in agreement...

The people are showing who the boss is. The weapon in their hands is the internet, which, in the last five days, has seen frantic activism against "power brokering" by journalists in collusion with corporate groups and top government politicians. It all began with the publication of sensational tapes related to the 2G spectrum scam by two magazines over the weekend. Two high-profile journalists, Barkha Dutt and Vir Sanghvi, whose names...

Rahul Gandhi, the general secretary of India’s Congress party, often says that there exist “two Indias” — one of the rich, and one of the poor. Those two Indias were in evidence a couple of weeks ago, when closely timed events on opposite sides of the planet brought into relief the deep divides that in many ways define this country. In Mumbai on Nov. 7, President Barack Obama told a group of...