If you want to kill any idea in the world, get a committee working on it,' quipped Charles F Kettering , the famous American engineer and inventor of the electric starter. Well, the government has done just that! It has appointed an eight-member committee to examine ways to tackle black money. Perhaps that is too cynical! After all, the flurry of activity (the committee is only one of a series...

-The United Nations   Investing a relatively small amount each year in the forestry sector could halve deforestation, create millions of new jobs and help tackle the devastating effects of climate change, according to a United Nations report released today to mark World Environment Day. The report, “Forests in a Green Economy: A Synthesis,” finds that an additional $40 billion spent each year in the forestry sector – or just 0.034 per...

Like millions of others across India, I have spent the past week repelled by the spectacle of a weak government entering into improbable contortions over the naive and somewhat bizarre demands of Baba Ramdev. And when the “toughness” followed in the early hours of Sunday, it came in a typically cowardly fashion — with police action in the dead of the night against unarmed supporters who did not pose an...

If nothing else, the Delhi police raid on Baba Ramdev's camp on Sunday has helped clear some confusion. The midnight swoop was unexpected, but we now know that the central government, which treated the yoga guru like an honoured state guest when he first arrived in Delhi, is his enemy. Congress leader Digvijay Singh has described Ramdev as a "thug" and a "fraud". In turn, Ramdev has accused the centre of...

-The Indian Express   Compulsory education defeats its own purpose if isn’t sufficiently compulsory and long enough. India has been a late entrant into the community of nations that offer their children free and compulsory education up to a basic level, for a certain minimum number of years. The Right of All Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, passed in 2009, entitled every child between 6 and 14 years of...