The world needs to act quickly to counter the erosion of species. The task is particularly important for India, one of the 12 mega-biodiversity centres.  May 22 marked the International Day for Biological Diversity. It commemorates the adoption of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) that day in 1992. As of December 2009, exactly 192 countries and the European Commission were signatories to it. This year has been declared the...

Suresh Tendulkar created a flutter among policymaking circles when a committee led by him raised the estimate for poor households in the country to 74 million from the Planning Commission estimate of 65.2 million. The former chairman of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council explained why his numbers are more credible in an interview with ET’s Pooja Suri and Amiti Sen. Excerpts: Why did your committee decide to accept the...

Caste proponents say the census must include questions on caste to establish true caste ratios. Opponents say questions on caste are socially divisive. They also raise a behavioural objection: the very announcement of a caste census could encourage people to claim, fraudulently, that they belong to a caste entitled to reservations. This behavioural objection applies as forcefully to surveys for determining poverty. The National Sample Survey Organization conducts periodic surveys on...

India should look at Latin American countries to keep its food security intact. With little or no investment in the agriculture sector,it is estimated that 45% of Indian farmers want to quit farming—supply-side constraints have been a major causeforconcern. Add to that rapidly falling water tables in North India – India’s bread basket, and erratic monsoons from climate change leading to domestic food output falling short of demand, repeatedlyinthefuture. Talking...

The world is consuming too much energy and materials to sustain itself and the global community must summon the political will to tackle a whole raft of challenges, from mineral extraction to waste recycling to the more than 200 toxic chemicals entering the blood of foetuses, the head of a United Nations commission warned today. The central question is “how to achieve green and equitable growth and development for a growing...