Every passing day makes it clear that the proposed food security law may not come by for a while. One report quoting the Planning Commission even suggested that it can be expected only in 2012. This Twelfth Plan (2012-17) launch has support from the concerned dual Ministry of Agriculture as well as Food, Consumer Affairs and Public Distribution. In that eventuality it does mean a surge in food insecurity.A dispassionate...

  What does the Niira Radia tapes, Wikileaks and whole body scanners have in common? It is the end of privacy both for the public individual or the private one. For the public individual, every thing that they speak or write can now be put in public domain. A quarter of a million cables from US Embassies around the world, some of them marked highly confidential are now public. So are...

The government is planning a complete overhaul of the way the power sector is financed and subsidies are delivered, attempting to address a funding shortfall delaying the construction of electricity projects and worsening a chronic power deficit that threatens to sap growth in India’s energy-hungry economy.This exercise is based on a report submitted by a panel headed by Montek Singh Ahluwalia, deputy chairman of the Planning Commission, to the power...

ALMOST any night of the week, Barkha Dutt can be found under the harsh glare of television lights, asking tough questions and demanding frank answers. But last Tuesday Ms. Dutt, the most famous face of India’s explosively growing 24-hour cable news business, found herself the subject of the kind of grilling she normally metes out.Before a jury of four of her peers, she parried questions and struggled to control her...

A death threat to a historic 13-year-old international treaty on climate change that surfaced last year appears to have intensified and may stall progress at the UN climate change talks here in this scenic Mexican city. Several industrialised countries are opposing the continuation of the Kyoto Protocol, the 1997 treaty that had set legally binding targets only on industrialised countries for the reduction of emissions of greenhouse gases up to the...