The people who uncovered the fact liken it to "encountering a mass grave of people who do not matter" in India's seat of power: At least 10 homeless people are dying on the streets of Delhi every day, the rate peaking as the summer rolls on. After a six-month examination of official records at crematoria, police stations and graveyards across India's richest city, Smita Jacob and Asghar Sharif, analysts with an...

Sustained improvement in disease control programmes, specially tuberculosis, and perceptible improvement in rural health care are the highlights of the UPA-II's report card in the health sector. In the 'Report to the People' released here today by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the government said, during 2009-10, more than 36,000 village health and sanitation committees were set up, over 1,300 facility-based Rogi Kalyan Samitis were formed and over 53,000 accredited social...

New Delhi has done well to declare its intention to play a proactive role at the forthcoming Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) at Nagoya (Japan) in October for thrashing out a legally binding pact on access to and benefit-sharing of biological resources. Being one of the world’s 12 mega biodiversity centres, India has substantial stakes in both preserving the biodiversity and capitalising on its commercial potential. Though the CBD, signed...

As the policies on better water management work themselves out and the larger sums of monies the UPA government is spending on them have an effect, technology is the major source of growth in Indian agriculture. Improved seeds matter. While the earlier seed suppliers in agricultural universities and seed corporations reorganise themselves with the support of the Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana, private and public private partnerships (PPP) are flourishing. Bt...

Nine of 10 mud-eating children are in the last stage of malnutrition. Eight of 10 people are deprived of every national social-security net and live with starvation and hunger. The average life span is 40 In April, the Hindustan Times revealed acute deprivation in the Uttar Pradesh village of Ganne, part of the former constituency of India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru.   Now, a Supreme Court inquiry team that visited the area...