India, like other Asian countries, has focused its climate change adaptation strategies on rural and urban areas while neglecting the urban fringes, say experts. Peri-urban areas are characterised by haphazard, accelerated expansion and are farthest from basic urban services and infrastructure, according to United Nations-Habitat’s ‘The State of Asian Cities 2010-11’. By 2020, of the projected 4.2 billion urban population of the world, 2.2 billion will be living in Asia, many...

-The Hindu The Ahmedabad Metropolitan Court on Tuesday reserved its order till April 10 on a plea for making public the report of the Supreme Court&NDAsh;appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT) on the 2002 Gulberg Society carnage. The SIT submitted the report in a sealed cover last month and all the documents and evidences of over 20,000 pages earlier this month in five locked trunks for the court's perusal. ...

Travelling in rural India always yields rich insights into how poor women struggle to provide that little extra, in terms of food, for the family meal. It was in the village of Vijaypura &NDAsh; in the drought prone Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh &NDAsh; that I came across Bharati, a 39-year-old farm woman and homemaker, working her everyday magic by laying out slices of potato and whole green chillies on the...

The Supreme Court has handed down an extraordinary decision with some extraordinary arguments directing the central government to execute the “river interlinking project”. How could the Court which says “it can hardly take unto itself tasks of making of a policy decision or planning for the country on the need for acquisition and construction of river linking channels” then go on to actually take the very same policy decision and...

The Budget provides proof of the United Progressive Alliance government having forgotten the importance of its own “flagship schemes”. BUDGET 2012-13 provides conclusive proof that the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government has lost its way. It has managed the remarkable feat of upsetting almost everyone and making no one happy. The Budget is highly regressive in both taxation and spending terms and will raise prices of essentials, so aam aurat and...