-The Indian Express It took the National Biodiversity Authority (NBA) six years, 18 drafts and a prod from the National Green Tribunal (NGT) to finalise the Guidelines for Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) this August. Three months on, it is yet to notify the rules that would allow it to collect from domestic and foreign companies 0.1-1 per cent of their ex-factory gross sales of products using biological resources and traditional...

-The Hindu The Deutsche Bank Urban Age Award 2014 sought to recognise projects that work towards improving the urban conditions of communities in Delhi We know what's going wrong, and we ask the right questions; questions which crop up while our car drives down narrow roads with broken street lights, landfills spilling over with waste we have created from nothing, and slums we cannot really imagine the insides of. Our city is...

-Outlook Mumbai: Asking micro-lenders to look at only a "reasonable profit" to sustain their business while serving borrowers at the bottom of pyramid, RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan has said that one should not think of making a fortune while serving poorest of the poor. The comments come in sharp contrast to management guru late CK Prahalad's views in his book The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid. The concept of the fortune...

-The Indian Express Thiruvananthapuram (Kerala): Infant deaths are still stalking tribal hamlets in Kerala's Attappadi region, where the community's population has been falling alarmingly due to various factors. The recurring incidents of infant deaths have cast a shadow over the survival of tribals in Attappadi. A study had found that tribals formed 90 per cent of population in Attappadi in 1951, but the same was down to 42 per cent in...

-The Economic Times For one who had worked so closely to frame the world's largest job guarantee programme, known as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, it's not easy to see it succumb to pressure. It's no wonder that economist-cum-activist Jean Dreze will raise his voice against this, along with eminent academics such as Pranab Bardhan and Maitreesh Ghatak. Dreze says corruption related to NREGA and leakages - its...