India has possibly the largest number of active non-government, not-for-profit organizations in the world. A recent study commissioned by the government put the number of such entities, accounted for till 2009, at 3.3 million. That is one NGO for less than 400 Indians, and many times the number of primary schools and primary health centres in India. Even this staggering number may be less than the actual number of NGOs active...

Young rag-pickers sifting through rubbish are a common image of India’s chronic poverty, but destitute children face new hazards picking apart old computers as part of the growing “e-waste” industry. ASIf, aged seven, spends his days dismantling electronic equipment in a tiny, dimly-lit unit in east Delhi along with six other boys. “My work is to pick out these small black boxes,” he said, fingers deftly prising out integrated circuits from the...

The recent spike in world food prices has further widened the gap between the developed and the developing economies. While, over 70 per cent of the world's population resides in poor countries, it has access to less than 40 per cent of the world's resources such as water, irrigated land, power, etc. This is a result of inconsistent economic progress (post-colonialisation birth pangs), rampant population growth and distractions such as...

The world's first electronic book on agriculture, The Agronomy and Economy of Important Tree Crops of the Developing World, compiled by K P Prabhakaran Nair, has been chosen to be kept in the British Library in London and the Congressional State Library in Washington. The Elsevier Academic Press-Macmillan combined, a major publisher in science, had commissioned Professor K P Prabhakaran Nair to compile the electronic book, which took him nearly five...

In the remote Raghopur block of Vaishali district in Bihar, the primary health centre (PHC) is supposed to be operational 24X7, with the medical officer in charge (MOIC) running the out-patient department between 8am and 12.30pm. On 8 May, the MOIC reached the PHC at 10.30am and left after an hour. According to patients, this was not a random event. Most of the 20-strong crowd awaiting medical attention is turned away....