-The Times of India It was a rainy July evening ten years ago. A motley group of villagers from Sutia gathered at the local market to protest the spate of rapes that had left the area terrorized. They were angry but terrified of reprisal. And they did not know if anyone would join the fight. Speaking in hushed tones, they distributed leaflets asking people to join the protest. Some took the...

-The Guardian 'Pathway for a sustainable future' declared, but Greenpeace says summit was failure of epic proportions Amid doubt, disappointment and division, the world's governments came together in Rio on Friday to declare "a pathway for a sustainable century". At the close of the Rio+20 Earth Summit, heads of state and ministers from more than 190 nations signed off on a plan to set global sustainable development goals and other measures to...

-AP Less than four months ago the world was cheered to learn that India had gone a full year with no new cases of polio, a landmark that left only Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria on the World Health Organization's list of countries where the disease is endemic.  But the battle is far from over, judging by the WHO's latest expressions of alarm. It says that in both Nigeria and Afghanistan the number...

Lack of knowledge, fear of political criticism are some of the reasons that are stopping FCI, according to experts What is stopping Food Corp. of India Ltd (FCI) from selling its ample wheat stocks in the open market and buying futures contracts to meet its distribution commitments in the months ahead? Or, for that matter, what is keeping the food procurement agency from selling grain futures internationally, knowing that a bumper crop...

-The Times of India The government's white paper on black money, tabled in Parliament on Monday, listed a one-time tax amnesty to recover funds stashed abroad and a gold deposit scheme for locals as possible ways to deal with the menace, while suggesting that individuals get the tax department's go-ahead for all property deals and face undue scrutiny on cash in their possession. It also called for setting up of independent regulators,...