“This is a country on the make.” The speaker was a young assistant to one of India’s rising political stars. And from his perspective, it did look that way. We were sitting in the lobby restaurant of New Delhi’s luxurious Taj Mahal Hotel. That evening, the Taj was not only the place for a government reception following Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s decisive re-election victory, but it was also the scene...

With the national capital furiously gearing up to meet the deadlines of the Commonwealth Games, the alarming number of deaths of construction workers in absence of proper safety norms and adequate compensation is a cause of concern, say social activists. The actual number of accidents and casualties are much more but many such cases never get reported, they add. Fifty nine construction workers were killed and 115 suffered serious injuries...

Despite the government’s efforts to reduce maternal deaths by encouraging deliveries at health centres, the system continues to fail poor women. I gave birth in the developing world, in South Africa, to be precise. South Africa was in the spotlight recently when a government-commissioned report showed a 20 per cent increase in the number of deaths from pregnancy-related causes between 2005 and 2007 over the previous three-year period. The report...

Eighteen countries around the Indian Ocean Rim will participate in a United Nations-backed tsunami exercise on 14 October to coincide with World Disaster Reduction Day, the first time that the warning system set up following the devastating disaster that struck the region in 2004 will be tested, according to UN information brief. The exercise takes place in the wake of the tsunami that killed more than 100 people in Samoa...

Between 2005 and 2007, the world saw doubling of the prices of wheat, coarse grains, rice and oilseed crops and they continued rising in early 2008. It has been predicted by an OECD study (2008) that on average over the coming ten-year-period, prices in real terms of cereals, rice and oilseeds are projected to be 10% to 35% higher than in the past decade. This means more trouble for the...