Today is the ''International Day for the Eradication of Poverty'', so it an appropriate day to note how necessary it still is to emphasise this concern among Indian policy makers. Sadly, lack of official awareness is evident in all sorts of recent policy measures, for example in the cynicism of increasing oil prices that feed into all other prices with cascading effects, even when inflation has already imposed huge burdens on...

-The Hindustan Times   The World Bank and International Monetary Fund just concluded their annual meetings in Washington. At an event on nutrition in South Asia, the Evidence presented was clear and astonishing. On the one hand, South Asia has experienced robust economic growth averaging 6% a year over the past 20 years. On the other hand, the region continues to have unacceptably high rates of malnutrition with Bangladesh and India having...

-Kashmir Observer   New Delhi’s claims of the AFSPA not standing in the way of justice for victims of forces’ atrocities in Kashmir have been exposed further by civil society activism squeezing incriminating data out of the government.    With public organisations asserting almost 8000 enforced disappearances among innumerably more human rights violations at the hands of the central armed forces and the state police in Kashmir in the past two decades, the state...

Maulana Syed Mohammad Ashraf Kachochavi is the General Secretary of the All-India Ulama & Mashaikh Board (AIUMB), a Sufi sect that came from nowhere to take Moradabad — and the Muslim world — by storm last week. Soft-spoken and gentle, with long robes and a flowing beard, he fits the part of the Sufi cleric to perfection. Yet on stage at the Sufi Maha Panchyat, he roared like a lion, hurling...

-The Hindustan Times   At a time when it's reeling under allegations of scams and scandals, official documents show that the government gave the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) more immunity from the Right to Information (RTI) Act than what the agency had originally sought. The issue of how much immunity the CBI should get was bounced between several government departments, committees and officials that questioned the agency's demand of partial immunity, all...