-Tehelka By brazening it out against graft allegations, our netas are mocking common decencies. IT IS extremely unlikely that India Against Corruption, or the political arm it has promised, will win too many votes or even a single seat in the 2014 Lok Sabha election. It goes without saying though that at the current juncture, it is winning a perception and media battle against the political class. Each time a politician is...

-The Indian Express The International Monetary Fund’s recent downgrading of the growth forecast for India from 6.2 per cent to 4.9 per cent for 2012, which came on the heels of the decline in the actual growth rate to below 5.5 per cent in the first half of 2012, has brought reforms back to the centrestage of the policy discourse. Which reforms are needed and why? India’s growth trajectory has been unique....

-Outlook Could scientists have got the impacts of climate change on food supply wildly wrong? I believe we might have made a mistake: a mistake whose consequences, if I am right, would be hard to overstate. I think the forecasts for world food production could be entirely wrong. Food prices are rising again, partly because of the damage done to crops in the northern hemisphere by ferocious weather. In the US, Russia...

-The United Nations Amid economic crises, climatic shocks, and high and volatile food prices in a world of plenty where nearly 870 million people still go hungry, the United Nations today marked World Food Day by highlighting agricultural cooperatives as vital weapon in the war on poverty and hunger. “Owned by their members, they can generate employment, alleviate poverty, and empower poor and marginalized groups in rural areas, especially women, to drive...

-The Hindu Property empire was built on soft loans handed out in unusual circumstances, documents show In February, as rumours of the ambitions of Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law swirled amidst the heat and dust of the election campaign in Uttar Pradesh, her daughter Priyanka moved to scotch speculation about Robert Vadra’s possible political future. “He’s a successful businessman,” the younger Ms. Gandhi said of her husband, “who is not interested in changing...