A new report on India's housing sector confirms with facts and figures what has been suspected all along: that despite growing demand for affordable housing, supply side responses have been weak and sluggish. This means even though the housing sector can directly impact employment and income generation, and has multiple forward and backward linkages with various industries, it needs innovative ideas, pro-poor thinking and policy stimulus. (See link below for...

-The Times of India VARANASI: In an extremely cold and shivering night, a man with torn clothes was eating something picked up from a dustbin at platform number 4 of Charbagh railway station of Lucknow. Some passenger may have thrown the leftover eatable. But, finding it insufficient to satiate his hunger the man started looking for some more stuff in other dustbins at the platform. When this correspondent tried to interact with...

-The Hindu     Policies being pursued in India are based on the growth-at-any-cost model. The poor and the enviroment suffer while the corporates and organised sectors reap the benefits The Aam Aadmi Party, having won the trust vote, is now in the saddle in Delhi. By announcing several measures to benefit Delhiites, it had already impacted the political discourse in the nation. The established political parties are trying to follow suit. Why did...

-Frontline A report by ActionAid and the Tata Institute of Social Sciences highlights the vulnerability and tragic living conditions of thousands of children who take shelter in Mumbai's streets. IN 1988, the acclaimed film-maker Mira Nair made Salaam Bombay!, a poignantly revealing film on street children in Mumbai. The plot revolves around the protagonist, Krishna or "Chaipau", who is kicked out of his home by his mother for having damaged his...

-The New Indian Express   Most people would have been shocked to read the year-end report that India has been ranked 63rd, much below countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal, on the Global Hunger Index (GHI), a yardstick used by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) to comprehensively measure global hunger. The index is calculated as an average of three indices-undernourishment, underweight children and low child mortality rate-and is measured on a...