Two years of drought has started to take its toll on the people of Vidarbha, with a failed crop leaving them with no income to tide over the crisis. He's a butcher out of business. “I want to shift to a town like Panderkauda,” says Sarfaraz Qureshi in Yavatmal district. “I'm unable to sell any meat in the villages I work in.” Qureshi is a small operator who carries as...

Is the Indian government bargaining away the rights of millions across the world to essential drugs supplied by India, hailed as the pharmacy of the developing world, in the name of free trade with the European Union (EU)? That's a fear being expressed by civil society groups in the developing world. Commerce minister Anand Sharma vehemently denies such a possibility, claiming that the free trade agreement (FTA) under negotiation with...

Bhisham Singh Yadav, father of the groom, is stressed. His rented Lexus got stuck behind a bullock cart. He has hired a truck to blast Hindi pop, but it is too big to maneuver through his village. At least his grandest gesture, evidence of his upward mobility, is circling overhead. The helicopter has arrived. Mr. Yadav, a wheat farmer, has never flown, nor has anyone else in the family. And...

After ghost employees, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) is being haunted by ghost pensioners. According to the civic agency, it pays Rs 1.5 crore per month to ghost pensioners, which add up to Rs 17 crore per year. The civic agency issues cheques of Rs 1,000 each as pension to approximately two lakh widows and old people having no source of income. However, it has come to light that many...

Rajendra Pachauri, the embattled head of the UN’s climate change panel, clocked up more than half a million miles of air travel in a year and a half as he travelled the world warning of the global warming threat. On his international missions, Pachauri, the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), called for radical action to stave off environmental disaster. He urged people to eat less meat, pay...