Water, the most vital of all resources, has emerged as a key issue that would determine if Asia is headed toward cooperation or competition. After all, the driest continent in the world is not Africa but Asia, where availability of freshwater is not even half the global annual average of 6,380 cubic metres per inhabitant. When the estimated reserves of rivers, lakes, and aquifers are added up, Asia has less than...

Herding cattle and weaving carpets, on city waste-heaps, at traffic lights, in roadside eateries, in farms and in factories, in brick kilns and coal mines, in brothels and in our homes, children of the poor work at an age when our own are in school or at play. What is remarkable is not just our collective acceptance of such diverging destinies of children merely because of the accident of where they...

The European Commission has registered Darjeeling Tea as a Protected Geographic Indication (PGI) product — the first commodity from India to get such a tag. The status implies that the brew produced only in Darjeeling can be sold as Darjeeling Tea in the European Union countries. But a section of blenders, who at present pass off brew with a certain percentage of Darjeeling brew as Darjeeling Tea, have been given a...

Prof. Thomas Pogge of Yale University on Tuesday strongly advocated the need for global institutional reforms to eradicate poverty, ensure human rights and secure global justice. He suggested establishing a Health Impact Fund (HIF) to complement the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). Prof. Pogge made these observations while delivering the First Dr. Arjun K. Sengupta Memorial Lecture at O. P. Jindal Global University in Sonepat near Delhi. Prof. Pogge said:...

-The United Nations   The United Nations independent expert on the right to food cautioned today that smallholder farmers face the risk of exploitation under contract farming arrangements with processing or marketing companies, and recommended mechanisms that could ensure that such agreements are fairer. “Contract farming for its benefits, which I am not denying, nevertheless locks farmers into one segment of the food chain,” said Olivier De Schutter, the Special Rapporteur on the...