Only a process of reverse migration based on the Gandhian model can save India’s cities, and also rural India.  A report prepared by the United Nations Development Programme reveals that in India’s big cities more than 40 per cent of the people live in slums. Some of them have reasonable levels of income, but cannot afford other housing. For many reasons including the population load, slums are unhygienic. It is...

This newspaper recently hosted its annual debate on whether a resurgent Bengal was an impossible dream. Not surprisingly, the verdict of the 600-odd listeners went against the motion. This has as much to do with tangible societal gains as with an enveloping sense of crisis which embeds enormous opportunities. The glorious past of Bengal needs no persuasion. It was integrated with the rest of the world through trade and interchange...

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon intends to join a 24-hour fast over the weekend on the eve of the World Summit on Food Security in solidarity with the planet’s one billion people who do not have enough to eat, his spokesperson said today. Mr. Ban will deliver a speech at the opening of the three-day summit in Rome on Monday in which he is expected to say that it is unacceptable that...

For a man who will inherit vast tracts of fertile farmland in Punjab, India's grain bowl, Jaswinder Singh made what seemed to him a logical career move -- he took a job with a telecoms company in New Delhi. "I can't go back to the village after an M.B.A. Delhi has more money, better quality of life. The job is more satisfying, and you don't depend on the weather or...

Reader responses to last week’s column on media-related malpractices during elections throw further light on this serious issue, which is now before the Press Council of India. Some of them contend that the alleged malpractices were neither new nor confined to Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra. No less shocking than the “coverage package” of Maharashtra or the “cash transfer scheme” of Andhra Pradesh is the “power of extraction” that allegedly played...