India is today the world's largest importer of arms. These include fighter jet planes, missiles and radar systems for strategic partnerships and geo-political power. India is also investing in security and surveillance to combat foreign threats and resistance from its own people in places like the Kashmir valley, and the North East and tribal regions of Central India. This provides tremendous opportunity for multi-national corporations to sell and invest in...

Weighed down by an unending season of corruption, the political leadership of ruling the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) has stepped in to rescue the regime’s flagship rural employment guarantee scheme from discredit due to mounting allegations of endemic irregularities. The National Advisory Council of the UPA, headed by Sonia Gandhi, on Wednesday asked the Manmohan Singh government to expedite notification of the much-awaited rules that would allow public scrutiny of the...

India has large wheat stocks already yet policy dictates they increase. In states like Punjab, Haryana, UP and Gujarat prices have fallen and are below the minimum support prices. This is a policy-induced outcome. A safe game in grains is fine, given the global politics of grain trade and the great ability of Indian politics to subsidise the wrong man in the vote bank — but how safe is safe? The...

-The United Nations   The United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) has drafted a plan committing Member States and development partners to implement priority nutrition interventions and policies on health care, education and agriculture to improve the health of mothers and their children. The measures, which will be included in a WHO report to be entitled Maternal, infant and young child nutrition: implementation plan, were discussed today at WHO’s ongoing 64th World...

-IANS   Even rich and educated Indian families with a girl as the first child choose to abort their second child if prenatal test shows it to be a girl, said a study released by Centre for Global Health Research (CGHR) here Tuesday. According to the study: 'Analysis of the trends examined from the statistics of the census of year 2011, 2001, 1991 note a sharp decline in the girl-to-boy sex ratio...