-The Hindustan Times India has driven the truck of development - loaded with tar, bricks, glass, concrete...the works - right through its most treasured and fragile green spaces in the last decade. While major cities like Delhi and Mumbai sacrificed green cover for real estate, the country's finest wildlife corridors have been ceded to indiscriminate industrialisation. In the absence of a clear policy to balance development and environment, the Aravallis in Gurgaon,...

-The Hindu Business Line The risk of water availability is a painful reality in south Asian agriculture including India. Any deviation from the monsoon causes problems for the farm community and poses threat to food security in the region. The variability in precipitation in India has actually increased in recent years. While comparing the variability of precipitation (given by standard deviation) between two phases, 1950-75 and 1976-2010, in two geographically dispersed districts...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: At a time when people feel increasingly unsafe on the streets and spectre of terror attacks keeps security agencies on the toes, India stares at an abysmal police - population ratio of 106 policemen per one lakh people - less than half of the UN recommended figure of 222. Even at the senior level, 1093 IPS posts are lying vacant, according to the latest government...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: For a country which till recently had a weak civil society movement, India is now witnessing a boom in the NGO sector. With a population of 1.2 billion, the country could well be the land of opportunities for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) with the Central Bureau of Investigation conservatively estimating 20 lakh of them already operating in states and union territories. The mind-boggling figures boil down to...

-PTI Opposition parties on Friday disrupted Rajya Sabha demanding a special economic package for seven most backward states including Bihar, Odisha and Uttar Pradesh, leading to an adjournment of the House till noon. Raising the issue, Kiranmay Nanda (SP) said the Central government had failed to provide financial package to the seven most backward states identified in the Raghuram Rajan report. The Rajan panel had in September 2013 recommended a new index of...