One billion hungry people, the largest such cluster in history, are depending on another one billion to donate small amounts of cash to find food. The World Food Programme, facing a funding shortfall with donor governments hit by the financial crisis, has issued its first direct appeal to one billion individuals to stump up what they can to help others beat hunger. Josette Sheeran, head of the UN food aid...

There is a growing chorus of views - representing some very influential writers in India and elsewhere - in favour of direct cash transfer into poor people's bank accounts as a more efficient social security net than the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS). Economist Arvind Panagariya has called direct cash transfer ''the least costly policy to give immediate relief to the poor". Having returned from a series of field...

With less than two months to go until the big-ticket UN climate change conference in Copenhagen from 7-18 December, are cracks appearing in the tough-as-nails approach that has characterised Indian officialdom? A leading Indian newspaper reported on Monday that Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh had written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, suggesting that Delhi should accept a deviation from the 1997 Kyoto protocol on climate change which puts the onus squarely...

A prolonged dry spell has left the epicentre of farmer suicides in crisis again Yavatmal: Recent rains have given Vidarbha a fresh look, but they have done little to ease the misery of thousands of farmers in these districts at the eastern edge of Maharashtra as they live with the reality of parched fields and mounting debt. As election fever grips the state, farmers in Yavatmal and nearby districts swear...

West Bengal, Chhattisgarh are the best performers in providing jobs for the disabled, says govt data Bishnu Chaudhary and his wife Vijaya Devi, both stricken by polio, have been waiting for work for the past two years. But on 2 October, Chaudhary and others like him picked up the shovel to show that they too are able. “We wanted to show that we can also work, just like everyone else...