-PTI Raising the issue of "harassment" of tribals by forest department officials, Tribal Affairs Ministry has asked the Odisha government to ensure that these villagers get unfettered access to bamboo plantation areas for earning their livelihood. In a letter addressed to Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, Tribal Affairs Minister V Kishore Chandra Deo has raised the issue of forest department officials denying transit rights to tribals in Kalahandi district and not allowing...

-PTI India’s monsoon, vital for Asia’s third-largest economy, has been 22% deficient till June 26, official data showed, adding to the government’s worries and prompting Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to consult key aides on measures to tone up the economy on Wednesday. In a revised forecast, the Met department predicted the rains would be 96% of the long-term average, lower than its April forecast of 99%. Rainfall is considered normal if...

-The Telegraph   Ashok V. Desai,consulting editor of The Telegraph and chief consultant to the finance minister when Manmohan Singh launched the economic reforms, takes a deep dive into statistics to figure out what is wrong with the economy as Pranab Mukherjee leaves the finance ministry and Singh takes charge The growth rate of gross domestic product is reported to have come down. What does that mean? Before the question can be answered,...

One-third of food produced globally every year does not reach human mouths - it is either lost in transit or wasted by consumers themselves. This amounts to a staggering 1.3 billion tonnes every year. These chilling figures are contained in a report called 'Avoiding Future Famines' released by the United Nations Environment Programme at the recently held Rio+20 summit on sustainable development.  Consumers throw away 222 million tonnes of food in...

-The Economic Times Imagine a rural family of five. Mom. Dad. Two kids. And Grandma. Assume too that they are below the poverty line. The day is coming when this family will have to give its biometrics out to myriad agencies.  You know that Nandan Nilekani's Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) or the Registrar General's National Population Register (NPR) has been collecting biometrics for a while now.  But a set of other...