The United Nations today launched a pilot project to provide fuel-efficient stoves to some 150,000 women in Sudan and Uganda to cut the risks of murder, rape and other violence they face in gathering firewood, while at the same time protecting the environment. The Safe Access to Firewood and Alternative Energy in Humanitarian Settings (SAFE) stoves initiative organized by the World Food Programme (WFP) and other UN agencies, will be...

If Paul Samuelson, who died this weekend at the ripe age of 94, has been described in many obituaries as the greatest economist of the 20th century and the “founder of modern economics”, even though most professional economists would credit John Maynard Keynes with that title, it is because most students of economics around the world came to the discipline through his textbook. First published in 1948, Samuelson’s Economics: An...

Demanding equal educational opportunities for all children, a large contingent of people walked to Bal Bhavan here this past Friday in support of three key demands on the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009. December 11 was the day India ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) to demand the right to education for every Indian child. Regretting that millions of...

On International Anti-Corruption Day (9 December), the United Nations has warned that corruption kills development, and is one of the biggest impediments to reaching the Millennium Development Goals. "When public money is stolen for private gain, it means fewer resources to build schools, hospitals, roads and water treatment facilities. When foreign aid is diverted into private bank accounts, major infrastructure projects come to a halt," said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. He warned...

Introduction The phenomenon of disability is one of the pressing problems in the world. According to the projections of international agencies, about 10 per cent of the population are affected with physical, mental, sensory and other forms of impairments and around 75 per cent of the disabled population are concentrated in the rural and inaccessible areas of the developing societies. This data is based on recent studies carried out in various...