The Supreme Court stole a march on Saturday over a wavering UPA with its direction to the government to consider altering the poverty line and distributing 5 million tonnes of foodgrain to the poorest 150 districts. With the proposed Food Security Act being lobbed back and forth between the government, the Congress leadership and the National Advisory Council, the apex court's order dented UPA's pro-poor image. It might have been...

To prevent starvation deaths and malnutrition To ensure that no starvation death takes place and people are saved from malnutrition as far as possible, the Supreme Court on Saturday directed the Centre to release five million tonnes of foodgrains immediately for distribution in 150 most poverty-stricken districts or other poorer segments in the country. Though it was a holiday for the court, a Bench of Justices Dalveer Bhandari and Deepak Verma held...

The world is experiencing a change in the geographic distribution of diseases. Traditionally, infectious diseases, which claim the lives of so many children, affected poor countries, and noncommunicable diseases like diabetes, cardiac ailments and cancer plagued rich countries. But the latest statistics released by the World Health Organisation (WHO) Friday show that the income level of nations is no longer so important, and that all countries now face the burden of...

The arrest of Suresh Kalmadi on 25 April marked yet another scene in the prolonged drama surrounding the Commonwealth Games held in Delhi in October 2010. Yet the general media focus on Kalmadi may have served to distract attention from the many other acts of omission and commission that mark the sordid history of that extravagantly planned and deeply flawed public show. In these other actions, there are stories of funds...

An annual meeting of Asian finance ministers and central bank governors in Hanoi is set to address the fate of 64 million people in the region on the brink of extreme poverty. They are the worst affected by soaring food prices, which have hit record highs in the first two months of this year. "The issue of food price inflation and food security will indeed be one of the key topics...