FAO has warned that 2011 may witness a global food crisis. Proactive action is needed to meet the challenge of price volatility, chronic hunger, agrarian despair and climate change. The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) has alerted developing countries about possible steep rises in food prices during 2011, if steps are not taken immediately to increase significantly the production of major food crops. According to FAO, “with...

While the lay public may have been shocked by the revelation of an often cosy relationship between public relations (PR) professionals and the media, brought out by the Niira Radia telephone tapes, few in the media or in business would have been surprised. Few editors and reporters today can say they have not been approached for “friendly stories” or threatened with ad blackouts or block access for failure to publish...

The Radia tapes reveal the networks and routers, the source Codes and malware that bind the corporate and political establishments in India. As squeamish schoolchildren know only too well, dissection is a messy business. Some instinctively turn away, others become nauseous or scared. Not everyone can stomach first hand the inner workings of an organic system. Ten days ago, a scalpel — in the form of a set of 104 intercepted...

Mahitosh Sarkar came here from his distant village in West Bengal 12 years ago looking for a better life, and he found it. He abandoned the penniless existence of a subsistence fisherman to become a big-city vegetable seller. His wife found work as a maid. Their four children went to school. Their tiny household, a grim but weather-tight room in a dilapidated tenement, had a color TV and a satellite...

Whatever the justification given by journalists whose names have come up in the `Radiagate' expose, there is no question that it has forced much-needed introspection. For years, the cosiness between prominent media persons and both politicians and the corporate world had become blatant. But rarely to the point where it was flaunted as it is today. In many ways, the 24-hour-news format and television have made this evident with anchors...