-The Business Standard   A young entrepreneur with an engineering degree from India’s premier engineering school and a postgraduate degree from the US’s finest technical school develops an innovative service aimed at ameliorating the energy utility situation in rural India. In 1995, he co-founds SELCO India, which provides customised energy solutions based on each household’s requirements. It facilitates low-income rural households to secure financing help from local financial institutions. Read how...

Retirement at 60 means a relaxed life for most people. Not so for 70-year-old P Mukundan, managing director of Servals Automation Pvt Ltd, though. He did retire from his busy business life at 60 but chose to become a social entrepreneur after that. He started a social enterprise that is 'for-profit' but that touches the lives of those who live in rural areas all over the world. In 2002, Mukundan started manufacturing...

Greenpeace India's ongoing campaign, “Fools for forests”, has received a tremendous response from people from diverse professional backgrounds primarily due to wholehearted support from the who's who of Bollywood. The campaign has attracted more than 30,000 people who have pledged their support to it. According to Bollywood actor Vinay Pathak who is renowned for his wisecracks, he is extending support to the campaign not to gain mileage but because he feels strongly...

-The United Nations   The United Nations today declared that the world has completely eradicated a cattle disease that has killed millions of bovines for millennia. It is the first animal disease to be officially declared eradicated – and only the second disease ever, after smallpox. A resolution approved by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) at its meeting in Rome today stated that the world was free of rinderpest, or...

-The Hindu   Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia said on Friday that the 12th Five Year Plan, which commences in 2012, would have to contend with a “severe water crisis.” “The water crisis is even more serious than the energy problem,” Dr. Ahluwalia said at a two-day regional consultation meeting of the southern States. Urging for a political consensus on the adoption of the Public Trust Doctrine in the...