-The United Nations   The internationally stated goal of improving access to safe drinking water across the globe is likely to be achieved well ahead of the 2015 deadline, but large numbers of people in the world’s least developed regions will still not benefit, according to a United Nations report released today. Reducing by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation by 2015 is one...

Absence of preventive measures and affordable and accessible health care leads to nearly 500 encephalitis deaths in Uttar Pradesh. IT is a strange paradox. In a country that aspires to be a superpower and boasts of rapid economic growth, 488 children died in a State, Uttar Pradesh, from encephalitis alone this year. It is nothing less than a national shame and tragedy. In six districts of Bihar, close to 200 children...

The Union Agriculture Ministry has nominated scientists belonging to the ICAR and state agricultural universities as resource-persons in 70 districts of eastern India in an attempt to give a fillip to the Centre's ambitious programme of extending the benefits of green revolution to the region. With paddy and rice production in Punjab and Haryana showing signs of plateauing, the government has been forced to turn its gaze towards the eastern states...

Budget 2011-12 and the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. THREE decades ago, in the early years of the Special Component Plan (SCP) for Scheduled Castes – very recently renamed inappropriately as Scheduled Castes Sub-Plan (SCSP) – Indira Gandhi on her return as Prime Minister wrote two historical D.O. letters dated March 12, 1980, one to Central Ministers and the other to State Chief Ministers, regarding the SCP in the Central...

Money makes news. When it is found, promiscuously. And when it is lost, presumptively. And when it is found to lie hidden. Also when it stands brazenly, as in election candidatures. Does hunger, to satisfy which money, income, wages — the power to purchase food — are needed, make news? Does the crisis in our agriculture make news? When Amartya Sen speaks of hunger and malnutrition, when MS Swaminathan does so...