-Reuters   Clad in white home-spun garments and living in a spartan room of his village's Hindu temple, Anna Hazare is an unlikely thorn in the side of the government hundreds of miles away in New Delhi. And yet for millions of Indians, he is a 21st-century Mahatma Gandhi, inspiring a rare wave of protests against the spiralling corruption that has tarnished the up-and-coming image of Asia's third-largest economy. Like Gandhi, who led India's...

-The Hindu   As auditor to a nation whose institutions of oversight are weak and underdeveloped, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India is more than just the keeper of our national accounts. It is, in many ways, a conscience-keeper and a watchdog, which may not bite but can bark and warn ordinary citizens that something is amiss in the wider affairs of state. Like the Election Commission and the Supreme...

More than one billion people will not get the basic sanitation and the clean water promised as such projects shrink sharply as a proportion of global aid budgets. A key development goal to halve the number of people without access to basic sanitation by 2015 will be missed because donor countries have diverted aid money away from unglamorous water projects, according to the World Bank and the charity WaterAid. Aid to...

-The United Nations   An estimated 10 million people across the Horn of Africa are facing a severe food crisis following a prolonged drought in the region, with child malnutrition rates in some areas twice the emergency threshold amid high food prices that have left families desperate, the United Nations reported today. In some areas of Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia and Uganda, drought conditions are the worst in 60 years, the...

-The Telegraph   India is trying to build a consensus on liberalising foreign direct investment (FDI) in retail and defence, finance minister Pranab Mukherjee today told a gathering of business leaders and policy makers in Washington. “Discussions are under way to build a consensus on further liberalisation of the FDI policy in retail and defence,” Mukherjee said. Differences exist within the Indian government on the appropriate policies for foreign direct investments in the...