There are now one billion hungry people on the globe, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said recently. A statistic that is shameful and shocking at the same time. The global financial crisis too has led to a dramatic rise in hunger across the world. Ban warned that the food crisis is a wake-up call for tomorrow since by 2050 the planet's population will be 9.1 billion people, over two billion more...

The latest UN environment report based on about 400 major peer-reviewed scientific studies over three years has warned that the threat of climate change could be much worse than predicted earlier. The UNEP Climate Change Science Compendium 2009 report warns that sea levels could rise by up to two metres by 2100 and five to ten times that over following centuries. (See salient features and links below) It says that the...

Twenty-five years ago this week, a gas leak at a Union Carbide chemicals plant in Bhopal released 40 tonnes of poisonous gases over the Indian city, killing thousands and injuring tens of thousands. To this day, many of the survivors live in crowded shacks in the slums that line the old factory walls. The people here are not the only ones who have been affected, however. The leak, which is often...

Food prices are rising at a rate that neither consumers nor politicians can afford. On this, there is consensus. But on the more substantive question as to what should be done about it, there is more silence than disagreement. The Opposition wants to blame the government, the government wants to shift the blame to the states. But ultimately, there is only so much that food management can do when there...

The bizarre politics behind the UPA's withdrawal of the controversial sugarcane price order. It was the quickest retreat that any government has made in recent times. It took just a day’s protest outside Parliament before the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government decided to withdraw the controversial provisions of a notification it had issued last month on the payment of fair and remunerative prices to sugarcane farmers. You may describe it as an...