-The Times of India Internationally acclaimed academician Noam Chomsky of Massachusetts Institute of Technology of the United States has warned that Koodankulam could be another Bhopal disaster in waiting. In a solidarity letter to the struggling people he said: "Nuclear energy is a very dangerous initiative, particularly in countries like India, which has had more than its share of industrial disasters, Bhopal being the most famous." "I would like to express my...

-The Hindu If we are going to buy American, why not adopt the American way of giving local bodies the right to refuse entry to super stores in their area There is the United States of America and then there is the ‘idea’ of USA that exists in the minds of significant portions of the middle classes all across the globe. How this looks in real life varies slightly according to the...

-The Economist An absence of optimism plays a large role in keeping people trapped in poverty THE idea that an infusion of hope can make a big difference to the lives of wretchedly poor people sounds like something dreamed up by a well-meaning activist or a tub-thumping politician. Yet this was the central thrust of a lecture at Harvard University on May 3rd by Esther Duflo, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute...

-The Economic Times It was just a ride in a cycle rickshaw that moved an Assam based veterinary surgeon, Dr Pradip Kumar Sarmah and got him thinking into setting up the concept of 'Rickshaw Bank'. The concept today has changed the lives of more than 10000 rickshaw pullers in six states in India. Dr Pradip Kumar Sarmah (47), the innovator of this concept, explained that majority of the rickshaw pullers drive rented...

Inequality in India is worsening and clearly following the US pattern India is a “relatively low-income inequality country” – to borrow an expression from a World Bank publication – when compared to China or Brazil, but there is no doubt that disparities have been widening of late. Planning Commission officials have admitted that inequality has risen in the first decade of the new millennium, although the factors responsible for it need...