-Rediff.com   India, home to a quarter of the world's hungry people with nearly 40 per cent of the population malnourished, is facing an unprecedented food crisis, international charity organisation Oxfam said on Wednesday. "Despite the doubling of the size of its economy since 1990, the number of hungry people in India has increased by 65 million because economic development excluded the rural poor and social protection schemes failed to reach them," Oxfam...

Jairam Ramesh's order of May 6 rescinding his earlier stop-work notice with regard to the Maheshwar dam surprises many. ON May 6, Jairam Ramesh, the Union Minister of State for Environment and Forests, made a confession while responding to a questioner at a public meeting. He said he had been under “pressure” to overlook environmental violations while clearing certain projects. “Regularisation of illegality is a peculiar Indian characteristic. First you...

-The Hindu   Human rights activist Binayak Sen said here on Monday that there was no question of his being a Naxal sympathiser. “Neither am I a Naxal sympathiser nor [an] opposer of Naxals,” Dr. Sen told journalists at the Press Club. “I believe that violence, either of the state or the non-state actors, does not cure any problem,” he said. Launching a scathing attack on Salwa Judum, he said that it...

Cash transfers are now suggested by many as a silver bullet for addressing the problems that plague India’s anti-poverty programmes. This article argues instead for evidence-based policy and informed public debate to clarify the place, prospects and problems of cash transfers in India. By drawing on key empirical findings from academic and grey literature across the world an attempt is made to draw attention to three aspects of cash transfers...

-The Hindu   Medha Patkar ends fast on day 9 Medha Patkar, leader of the National Alliance of People's Movements (NAPM), ended her nine-day fast at Mumbai's Golibar colony on Saturday after the government handed her two resolutions incorporating the demands of the agitators. “It is a victory for the lakhs of people fighting for their right to live in the financial capital of India with dignity,” Ms. Patkar said. “The real fight...