The government's attempt to bring transparency in top bureaucracy does not seem to be working with the elite Indian Police Service (IPS) officers. Almost one-fifth of them failed to declare details of their immovable property before expiry of the deadline on Monday, despite repeated reminders issued by the home ministry.  The revised list of officers, who did not submit their Annual Immovable Property Return (AIPR) for the year 2011 by June...

-The Guardian  The Earth summit has to ensure sustainability is at the heart of growth models – the swelling global population depends on it Growth in itself is neither our enemy nor our problem. But what kind of economic growth do we need? And do we want growth at any cost? A child born today is one of seven billion people on Earth, and during its lifetime will see the world's population grow...

A narrow education is making engineers oblivious to the importance of human interaction and raising the cost of even simple tasks My time in South Asia has rewarded me with an enigma: why is engineering so expensive here? Why is it often many times more expensive than in Australia, my home? My search for answers led me to shanty towns on the fringes of mega-cities. We compared an award winning Indian factory...

John Vidal, who was in Rio for the '92 Earth summit, looks back at that momentous event, and how the 2012 version compares Helicopters thundered up and down the chic Copacabana and Ipanema beaches. Tanks guarded the bridges and tunnels. The favelas were in lockdown, schools closed and supermarkets stood empty. Unexpectedly, George H W Bush, the 41st US president, flush with success at the collapse of communism, had arrived in...

-The Hindustan Times Two years ago, nine-year-old Vishal got beaten up real bad by the class bullies at the government school in Lal Kuan in south Delhi. The bullies also tore up some of his school texts and threw away others. After that day, a petrified Vishal just couldn’t muster up enough courage to go back to school. Worse still, he couldn’t tell his parents — Radhe Shyam and Manju — about...