South Asia in general and India in particular have the dubious distinction of standing out for wrong reasons every time a new global poverty report is released. We not only have the largest number of underweight children, a very high maternal mortality rate and the world’s highest number of out of school children but we also top the global malnutrition chart. (See links below for more details)  However the 2011 United...

Heavy rains have claimed 16 lives in coastal Andhra Pradesh since the last two days and have caused widespread damage to standing crops, an official said on Wednesday. South coastal Andhra districts received heavy rains as a depression in the Bay of Bengal crossed the coast near Bapatla on Wednesday morning.According to an officials of the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD), the depression was centred 50 km northwest of Bapatla and...

Members of La Via Campesina and other groups condemn market-based solutionsHector Rodriguez, who runs an alternative radio station in Cancun called Reptil, decided on a novel way to protest the commercialisation of forestry.As hundreds of people marched to the venue of the United Nations Climate Change Conference on Tuesday, Mr. Rodriguez walked up to the posse of Mexican policemen with riot shields and launched into an impassioned plea to help...

Principal Advisor to Planning Commission Pronab Sen, who is heading a committee on wages, has said states are bound to pay prevailing minimum wages to workers under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. His view contradicts the stand taken by the rural development ministry, which had said that NREGA exempts itself from other laws including the Minimum Wages Act and hence the Centre is not obliged to reimburse states according to...

Pawan Goenka noticed something unusual last year—tractor sales were climbing even though India had its worst monsoon in more than three decades and farm output dropped 2.8% in the three months to December last fiscal. The umbilical cord that tied rainfall patterns and tractor sales seemed to have been ruptured. The president of auto and tractor maker Mahindra and Mahindra Ltd offers an interesting explanation to this puzzle: growing labour shortages...