An international private-social group foresees India’s water demand exceeding availability by a factor of two by 2030. Time is now for India to take on the daunting task of formulating a unifying national water policy.  The 2030 Water Resources Group is a consortium of private-social sector organisations formed in 2008 to provide insights into emerging world-wide water issues. In a report, “Charting our water future” issued in 2009, the group...

Fiscal slowdown has not affected India much  Forecasting a brighter future for the country’s economy by 2009-10 end, C. Rangarajan, Chairman, Economic Advisory Council to Prime Minister, said that if a consistent growth of four per cent in agriculture and nine per cent in the industrial and services sectors were maintained over the next two decades, it would propel India into the comity of developed nations. In a talk on...

Paul A. Samuelson, the first American Nobel laureate in economics and the foremost academic economist of the 20th century, died Sunday at his home in Belmont, Mass. He was 94. His death was announced by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which Samuelson helped build into one of the world’s great centres of graduate education in economics. In receiving the Nobel Prize in 1970, Samuelson was credited with transforming his discipline from...

The latest UN environment report based on about 400 major peer-reviewed scientific studies over three years has warned that the threat of climate change could be much worse than predicted earlier. The UNEP Climate Change Science Compendium 2009 report warns that sea levels could rise by up to two metres by 2100 and five to ten times that over following centuries. (See salient features and links below) It says that the...

The article presents the political and economic impacts of various kinds of natural and man-made disasters and associated displacement of populations, and argues for a wider and more inclusive definition of disasters in the interest of human rights, social justice and equity for the victims of disasters. Legislation, Disasters and People Numerous disasters at national and international levels have caused governments to recognise the need for rapid and effective response to provide...