While children are dying of malnutrition, our leaders are busy comforting the corporate sector   This week’s show of ‘Walk the Talk’ by Shekhar Gupta was the third in a series of episodes that seemed to be dedicated to bringing forth the corporate viewpoint to counter the current environment of mistrust, post Radiagate. While the first two were with Ratan Tata and Deepak Parekh, obvious corporate representatives, it is telling that as...

In this winter of gloom, doom and corruption, the government can bask in some warmth from data collected by its statistical agencies. (Alas, these agencies have yet to hire some basic data-processing capabilities from minor computer firms, let alone agencies like Infosys. Perhaps Nandan Nilekani can loan some programmers from the UID project.) So what is the issue, and what is the evidence?It was only a few months ago that...

A direct outcome of the global economic crisis has been a decline in the rate of growth of wages across the world, barring Asia and Latin America. A study by the International Labour Organisation, Global Wage Report 2010-11: Wage policies in times of crisis, highlights this reality and points to the need for countries to put in place proper social and labour market policies to protect an increasingly vulnerable workforce....

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...

In the capital of migrants, crime and loose tongues that is Delhi, it wasn’t unusual that Union home minister P. Chidambaram made the lazy connection that migrants are responsible for the city’s rising crime graph. After all, chief minister Sheila Dikshit has also done that before—only to recant when it was met with outrage, the way Chidambaram eventually did. That leaders at Chidambaram’s and Sheila’s level could be so simplistic...