A new report by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has found that politically and ideologically motivated attacks against teachers, students and schools are on the rise, calling for greater community involvement to reduce such incidents. Since the first-ever study on the issue, entitled “Education under Attack,” was published in 2007, the systematic targeting of students and teachers has been on the upswing, especially in Afghanistan, Pakistan,...

Increasing scrutiny of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and, in particular, its chairman, should lead to reforms THE past month has not been a good one for Rajendra Pachauri (pictured above), the charismatic chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and director general of TERI, an Indian research institute. His numerous positions on boards and industrial advisory panels, in India and beyond, have led to charges of conflicts...

Indian geologists who had two months ago accused a UN climate science agency of misleading the world with alarmist predictions about Himalayan glaciers have now said they stand vindicated. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has launched an exercise to find out how its fourth assessment report issued nearly three years ago contained a prediction that most of the Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035. “We’re looking into it. We’re...

Interview with Joan Mencher, an anthropologist who has worked in India for long on issues such as agriculture, ecology and caste.   JOAN P. MENCHER is a Professor emerita of Anthropology from the City University of New York’s Graduate Centre and Lehman College of the City University of New York. She is the chair of an embryonic not-for-profit organisation, The Second Chance Foundation, which works to support rural grass-roots organisations...

Paul A. Samuelson (May 15, 1915 — December 13, 2009) has often been described as the foremost academic economist of the 20th century. Randall E. Parker, the economic historian, has called him the “Father of Modern Economics”. All this may be hotly disputed in Chicago, but in any case, Samuelson was the first American to receive the Nobel prize in economic sciences. The Swedish Royal Academy’s citation stated that he...