-AP India has shut down three aid organizations it says were diverting foreign funds toward rallying protests against a Russian-built nuclear plant in the south, but one group on Saturday denied any involvement in the protests while another said its efforts were entirely homegrown.  Activists opposed to an expansion of India's atomic energy portfolio argue that Japan's Fukushima nuclear disaster caused by a massive earthquake and tsunami last March showed that such...

-The Times of India   Denying charges that their campaign against the Russian-aided Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project was being funded by United States-based groups, the People's Movement against Nuclear Energy convener S P Udayakumar on Saturday threatened legal action against Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Union minister of state in the PMO V Narayanasamy.  The Union minister told TOI on Friday that the licences of three NGOs backing the anti-nuclear protests have been...

India is lagging in its effort to reach United Nations goals to reduce poverty and improve health and sanitation, but has shown significant progress boosting education, treating AIDS and addressing environmental concerns, a U.N. official said. “We are in a race against time with just three years left” to achieve Millennium Development Goals, Noeleen Heyzer, executive secretary of the U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, said last...

Dr Abhijit Sen is Member, Planning Commission of India. He is a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Cambridge (currently on leave as Professor of Economics at the Jawaharlal Nehru University) and has also taught at the Universities of Sussex, Oxford and Cambridge. Besides serving various think tanks in the states and at the centre, Dr Sen has been a consultant with UNDP, ILO, FAO and various other multilateral...

The new draft National Water Policy (NWP) circulated by the Ministry of Water Resources to water experts suggests that the government is poised to withdraw from its responsibilities of water service delivery, and that multinational corporations and financial institutions might have too big a say in water allocation and policy. At first glance, it appears as if the policy takes a holistic approach to water resources management, with a clear recognition...