* Moved to London from Kenya in the 1970s. Schooled at Haberdashers’ Aske’s. Bachelor’s at University of Warwick.     * Has three siblings. Father in aviation. Three sons from failed marriage with UK businessman Janak Radia.     * India entry in 1995. Sahara liaison officer. India rep of Singapore Airlines, KLM, UK Air.     * Floats Crown Air as MD in 2000, with sister Karuna Menon as partner. Secures FIPB clearance to...

Manual scavenging persists, but community and political mobilisation of workers has initiated change. Only those who are in denial are surprised by the continued existence in India of casteism and inhuman practices associated with stigmatisation, despite institutions of the state decreeing their abolition. But progress has been made in fits and starts, and agency – in the form of community and political mobilisation – has played a role in their slow...

The government proposes to introduce a bill to regulate microfinance institutions (MFIs), accused of aggressive loan recovery practices, minister of state for finance Namo Narain Meena said on Tuesday. The move follows tight scrutiny of the fast-growing, largely unregulated, small loans sector after fears of large-scale defaults due to high interest rates and reports of suicides due to mounting debt. “The Department of Financial Services proposes to introduce the Micro Finance (Development...

While many U.S. residents prepare for their annual Thanksgiving feast Thursday, one in six are at risk of hunger – including a quarter of all children in the country. Globally, 925 million people, or a little less than 15 percent of the world population, is undernourished. Ironically, Washington's efforts to alleviate hunger abroad may be more successful than at home, analysts say. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's estimate last week that 49...

It is quite likely that a few weeks from now someone will be knocking at your doors and asking for your fingerprints. If you agree, your fingerprints will enter a national database, along with personal characteristics (age, sex, occupation, and so on) that have already been collected from you, unless you were missed in the “Census household listing” earlier this year. The purpose of this exercise is to build the National...