-The United Nations Recent global events have highlighted the fact that journalists and media workers reporting on human rights issues are particularly vulnerable to threats and attacks, an independent United Nations expert said today, calling for greater protection for those who carry out such vital work. “Because of the potential impact on society that journalists and media workers can have by disseminating information about human rights through a wide array of media,...

Women farmers suffer gross bias a global meet will look to change this Nearly half of the agricultural work is handled by women in developing countries and India is no exception. Yet, strategies for the development of agriculture are directed primarily at men. Barely five per cent of the extension efforts and resources are targeted at farm women. This failing, predictably, costs a good amount owing to loss of a part...

-The Telegraph A group of eminent individuals has written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh asking him to initiate a “truly inclusive process of deliberation” to help formulate a rational public policy on nuclear power and genetically modified (GM) crops. Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer, a former Supreme Court judge, and 16 others, including former scientists and administrators, have also questioned Singh’s remarks to a US journal last month suggesting that foreign non-government organisations...

India’s decision-makers seem to find it difficult to see that there are children in the country. Being unable to see them, they are unable to perceive that they are hungry. In an age when we are able to use euphemisms like ‘under-nutrition’, this is perhaps not surprising. But it is disgraceful none the less.   This country has a large population of children. Fortyone per cent of its total numbers. The national...

National Sample Survey Organisation's report on the average calorie intake per person in Indian households points to a much higher incidence of poverty in the country than reflected in estimates of the proportion of the population below the official "poverty" line. Among the features that sully India’s “growth story” is the persistence and possible worsening of malnutrition in the country. The subsistence nutritional intake adopted when defining the official poverty line...