In June 1991, the country embarked on a bold adventure by exposing to market vicissitudes its insulated manufactories, regulated (but pockmarked with soft spots) financial markets and inexperienced economic players. An economy, in those days, was about people, not giant factories and ships with riches. Though successive governments have secured the reformative underpinnings of the liberalisation process, it is to the credit of players in India that the sublime quest...

Human trafficking is one of the most lucrative illicit businesses in Europe, according to a United Nations report launched today at an event where Spain became the first country on the continent to join the UN Blue Heart Campaign against trafficking in people. The report Trafficking in persons to Europe for sexual exploitation, issued by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), shows that criminal groups make around $3 billion per...

Internationally renowned fashion designer and former supermodel Bibi Russell has joined hands with the ethnic Bodo women of the northeastern Indian state of Assam in creating a new line of lifestyle products that will blend traditional Bodo culture and high fashion. Bibi Russell, who was associated with leading international brands and fashion shows in the 1970s and 80s, will train Bodo women working for Weaving Destination in modern design techniques and...

Rising food prices and economic crisis have eaten into the gains made by India and the world in reducing poverty during the first half of this decade, a United Nations report released on Wednesday said. "Newly updated estimates from the World Bank suggest the crisis will heave an some 64 million into extreme poverty by end of 2010, principally in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia," the Millennium Development Goals, 2010 report...

The number of poor people in India is expected to halve by 2015, according to the 2010 Millennium Development Goals report released on Wednesday. The poverty rate in the country is slated to decline from 51% of the population in 1990 to 24% over the next five years. That translates into around 188 million more people meeting a minimum subsistence standard of $1.25 a day—the benchmark for the report's findings....