-Outlook Hyderabad: The next generation of biodiversity models across the world could emerge from the knowledge of existing approaches in India, a new United Nations Development Programme report said today. The UNDP report calls for adopting a "landscape approach" to bio-diversity governance which will allow a range of ecosystems and not just the smaller protected parts of it to thrive. On the basis of a detailed review of prevalent bio-diversity management models in...

-The Economist Growing inequality is one of the biggest social, economic and political challenges of our time. But it is not inevitable, says Zanny Minton Beddoes IN 1889, AT the height of America’s first Gilded Age, George Vanderbilt II, grandson of the original railway magnate, set out to build a country estate in the Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina. He hired the most prominent architect of the time, toured the chateaux...

-PTI UNITED NATIONS: The UPA government that has been facing brickbats from the opposition parties has got a compliment from BJP leader L K Advani for its flagship programme, MGNREGA, which he said has helped empower rural people and revive economic growth. Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), enacted in August 2005, has been touted as a flagship programme by the UPA government. Advani said the scheme is the largest cash...

-Mainstream Weekly Intense and motivated propaganda, powerful national and international diplomatic pressure, verging on pure and simple arms-twisting of the kind the Third World has been facing for decades by means of the active role of the econo-mic hit-men in the policy establishments, huge cash-back lobbying, both in India and abroad, blunt attempts to bamboozle the persons holding key positions in India’s policy establishment through a combination of hissing and kissing...

-Economic and Political weekly Drawing on the research on basic education in West Bengal, this essay argues the case for a much criticised public education system, which needs to be reconsidered as regards its potential as a provider of quality education, even while addressing its many failings. The essay follows an approach, both critical and constructive, that underlines the collective onus of the public in realising the value of the public...