-Down to Earth 'Will the Indian government abandon mining projects to protect us?' ask residents of Singrauli who face displacement because of Mahan coal project Ever since India assumed presidency of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) on October 8, it has never missed a chance to reiterate its commitment to conserving biodiversity and protecting indigenous people and their traditional knowledge. Indian officials attending the ongoing CoP 11 meet at Hyderabad have...

-PTI Melbourne: India has been ranked at a poor 115 by a global survey which looked into the level of economical empowerment of women in 128 countries.  The list was topped by Australia and followed by three Scandinavian countries -- Norway, Sweden and Finland.  At the bottom of the list were Yemen, Pakistan, Sudan and Chad.  The research done by an international consulting and management firm Booz & Company ranked India at 115 and...

-The Economic Times KOLKATA: The holy Ganga is a poison river today. It's so full of killer pollutants that those living along its banks in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Bengal are more prone to cancer than anywhere else in the country, says a recent study.  Conducted by the National Cancer Registry Programme (NCRP) under the Indian Council of Medical Research, the national study throws up shocking findings. The river is thick with...

-The Economist Growing inequality is one of the biggest social, economic and political challenges of our time. But it is not inevitable, says Zanny Minton Beddoes IN 1889, AT the height of America’s first Gilded Age, George Vanderbilt II, grandson of the original railway magnate, set out to build a country estate in the Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina. He hired the most prominent architect of the time, toured the chateaux...

-The HIndustan Times There is concern again about missing persons and bodies found in canals in Haryana. Surfacing of such bodies in Punjab’s canals has figured in media reports for years. But neither Punjab nor Haryana police take interest in retrieving the bodies, as the recovery involves reporting it, then attempting to identify it and locating the kin, cremation and maintenance of a record. Pushing bodies downstream eliminates all this bother. But...