Increased representation for women can unleash a broader process that can be set in motion by the strength of sheer numbers. One measure of whether it is important to have women in important policy formulation roles is to examine how a largely male-dominated system of government has served women. It turns out that India performs very poorly in this regard. Despite a few heartening examples to the contrary, in general Indian...

In mid-2009 it was declared that the tipping point has been crossed: world urban population crossed the 50% mark for the first time in human history. Contrary to the general impression, the bulk of this urban population does not stay in big metropolises. Over 53% of the world’s total urban population of 3.4 billion resides in towns with less than 5 lakh population. Of these, about 1.14 billion, or one...

Ambitious planting programmes in ASIa and the United States have helped slow the global rate of deforestation but farmers are still cutting trees to clear land at an alarmingly high rate, a U.N. survey released on Thursday shows. Forests absorb and store greenhouse gases so deforestation can exacerbate mean the effects of climate change, said Mette Loyche Wilkie, coordinator of the assessment by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. Eduardo Rojas,...

  Democratic political systems in every advanced western country have faced challenges posed by the role of political finance or money spent during elections. On the bASIs of their specific experiences, these countries have tried to tackle the issue of political funding during polls. The democratic political system is corrupted if elections are contested on the bASIs of financial resources provided by rich individuals or business corporations as these donors, from the...

While more than 200 million slum dwellers worldwide have escaped their conditions in the past decade, the overall population of slums has swelled by nearly 60 million in the same period, a new United Nations report finds. Some 227 million people have moved out of slum conditions, largely due to slum upgrading, since 2000, more than double the target of improving the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers...