Four disturbing trends that need tackling are food adulteration, drug counterfeiting, environmental degradation and corruption The strong and sustained growth of the Indian economy over the last 17-18 years has delivered many very creditable outcomes for its people at large. While a lot more needs to be done on a sustained basis for many more decades if the growth has to be truly inclusive for all Indians, this should not...

West Bengal, Chhattisgarh are the best performers in providing jobs for the disabled, says govt data Bishnu Chaudhary and his wife Vijaya Devi, both stricken by polio, have been waiting for work for the past two years. But on 2 October, Chaudhary and others like him picked up the shovel to show that they too are able. “We wanted to show that we can also work, just like everyone else...

The Indo-Asean FTA provides an opportunity to be more engaged with the region This is an important week for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Over the weekend, at the Fourth East Asia Summit in Thailand, he will witness the final fruition of the second most important foreign policy initiative he took during his first term in office — the India-Asean Free Trade Agreement. This should ensure he will be in better...

The 2009 Global Hunger Index (GHI), released last week by the International Food Policy Research Institute, sheds renewed light on just how acute India’s hunger situation actually is. Although South Asia has made progress at combating hunger since 1990, the IFPRI report terms the GHI in the region as being “distressingly high.” India is near the bottom, ranking at 65 (out of 84 countries) with a GHI of 23.90, which the...

Brazil and China have been praised for their efforts to tackle hunger, in a development charity's report released to coincide with UN World Food Day. But the ActionAid report criticises India and others countries for not doing enough to alleviate the problem. The agency also ranked rich countries, saying Luxembourg is trying hardest to end global hunger, while the US and New Zealand rank bottom. Studies estimate that one billion...