Evincing keen interest in working with India in the area of rural development, a British delegation today called on Rural Development Minister C P Joshi and sought co-operation in furthering Indo-British ties in the sector.The delegation, led by All Party Indo-British Parliamentary Group chairman and Labour Member of Parliament for Ealing Southall Virendra Sharma sought the co-operation of the Ministry in furthering Indo-British ties in poverty alleviation, education, skill development...

The market for clean energy products and services is increasing among India’s rural poor, and according to a new analysis, could potentially grow to more than USD 2 billion per year. Demand for clean energy products is rising among India’s rural communities, according to the Power to the People analysis released today by Centre for Development Finance at the Institute for Financial Management and Research (CDF-IFMR) and the World Resources Institute(WRI)....

The International Energy Agency (IEA) has highlighted that over 20% of the global population or 1.4 billion people lack access to electricity, which hinders economic and social development. Here in India, the grim reality is that almost half the population in rural areas has little or no supply of power. For long years, open-ended subsidies in power have mostly been diverted and usurped by the undeserving non-poor. Fortunately, social, managerial and...

The minister for environment and forests, Jairam Ramesh’s order stopping Vedanta Aluminum Ltd and the Orissa Mining Corporation from mining bauxite in the Niyamgiri Hills to feed the company’s adjacent Lanjigarh aluminum refinery plant located in one of the country’s poorest districts in the name of tribal interest tends to miss the wood for the trees. It is based on the report of a four-member expert group under N C...

A United Nations-backed intervention involving cook stoves holds the promise of saving lives, uplifting health, improving regional environments, reducing deforestation, empowering local entrepreneurs, speeding development, and helping to stem global climate change. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has joined international efforts to dramatically boost the efficiency of some 3 billion cook stoves across Africa, Asia and Latin America, with the aim to protect women’s health and provide significant environmental...