-Outlook Former Chief Election Commissioner S Y Quraishi has proposed mandatory annual audit of funds and donations received by political parties. "We want all political funding should be transparent and checked. There should be annual compulsory audits by an independent auditor to be picked up from a panel suggested by the Election Commission," Quraishi told PTI. He said the report of such audit should be put in the public domain. "Everybody will be able...

-The Hindu Women continue to be invisible to planners, despite their high levels of contribution to the national economy, says a UN Women paper on women and forests Some of the present policies in forest management are detrimental to the poor, particularly women, states a UN Women paper by NC Saxena, member National Advisory Council, even as he suggests changes that could ameliorate their condition. Despite economic growth, gender inequalities in “critical human development...

-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 Bangalore: Many persons with disabilities are jobless and unable to get or denied their paltry pension Seven-year-old Sadiya lies awake as her parents and siblings, who have just returned from an overnight trip to a dargah, catch up on their sleep. Lying on her back, no taller than an average toddler, she wails when she spots strangers at her door. Sadiya shares the tin-roofed 10 ft by 10 ft space...