-The United Nations More than a third of women worldwide are affected by physical or sexual violence, many at the hands of an intimate partner, according to a new United Nations report that offers guidelines to help countries respond to this global epidemic. The report, Global and regional estimates of violence against women: Prevalence and health effects of intimate partner violence and non-partner sexual violence, represents the first systematic study of global...

-Economic and Political Weekly     The puzzle of persistent undernutrition in India is largely explained by open defecation, population density, and lack of sanitation and Hygiene. The impact on nutrition of many faecally-transmitted infections, not just the diarrhoeas, has been a blind spot. In hygienic conditions much of the undernutrition in India would disappear. Robert Chambers (r.chambers@ids.ac.uk) is with the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, UK and Gregor von Medeazza (gvonmedeazza@unicef.org)...

-The Hindu     In spite of the rosy picture painted by the World Bank, the prospect of eliminating extreme poverty remains distant In a protracted period of gloom and persistent recession with feeble signs of recovery in a large part of the developed world, the World Bank, Brookings Institution and others can be forgiven for their euphoria over the accomplishment of a key Millennium Development Goal (MDG) - of halving extreme poverty in...

-The Hindu     The national culture of unquestioned obedience to authority along with an acceptance of shoddiness must not be used as an excuse to overlook violations of corporate ethics, says the Ranbaxy whistle-blower During my tenure at Ranbaxy, I was surprised by the unchallenged conformity to the poor decisions of senior leadership. Ranbaxy was my first Indian employer following my tenure at two different American corporations. Reflecting on this experience from cultural...

-The Times of India In the decade or so that i was at the Planning Commission, i always had advisory responsibility for the food ministry/public distribution system, among other issues of development policy. It did not take very long to find out that the fundamental problem with the system was about so-called "leakages" abetted by corruption: One soon learnt that the Food Corporation of India (FCI) was one of the most...