-IPS News NAGAPATNAM, India - Standing amidst his lush green paddy fields in Nagapatnam, a coastal district in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, a farmer named Ramajayam remembers how a single wave changed his entire life. The simple farmer was one of thousands whose agricultural lands were destroyed by the 2004 Asian tsunami, as massive volumes of saltwater and metre-high piles of sea slush inundated these fertile fields in the...

-IPS News SUNDARBANS, India- When the gentle clucking grows louder, 50-year-old Sukomal Mandal calls out to his wife, who is busy grinding ingredients for a fish curry. She gets up to thrust leafy green stalks through the netting of a coop and two-dozen shiny hens rush forward for lunch. In the Sundarbans, where the sea is slowly swallowing up the land, Mandal's half-hectare farm is an oasis of prosperity. The elderly couple resides...

-Business Standard The wide disparity between the best healthcare & quackery that much of the population must endure is partly to blame for India's apathy Whether Indians in ancient times discovered algebra and the Pythagoras theorem before "selflessly" passing them on to the Arabs and the Greeks as Science and Technology Minister Harsh Vardhan said last week is for agile historians to ponder. Widely accepted is that Indians in ancient times studied...

-The Guardian Universal healthcare is often presented as an idealistic goal that remains out of reach for all but the richest nations. That's not the case, writes Amartya Sen. Look at what has been achieved in Rwanda, Thailand and Bangladesh Twenty-five hundred years ago, the young Gautama Buddha left his princely home, in the foothills of the Himalayas, in a state of agitation and agony. What was he so distressed about?...

-The Hindu The introduction of educational qualifications as eligibility criteria for contesting panchayat elections has shocked and angered rural Rajasthan, including supporters of the ruling BJP When the literacy drive was in full force, I happened to visit a village in Ajmer district with a friend who was a civil servant. There was bold graffiti on a prominent school wall, which said: Saksharta ki kya pehchan? Upar chaddi, niche baniyan (How do...