At Wazirpur village, honour is a flighty commodity. Lost if your sister gets married on her own. And it is reclaimed if your relatives and friends hail that sister`s murder at your hands, on camera. A brother-in-law shot dead is also thrown in as icing. Because, in the fringes of the national capital this has come to mean `honour`. When one was barely done being outraged by the
India is home to 42.4 million widows, most of them living in deplorable conditions, said a report prepared by the Loomba Foundation. The report has also revealed that ‘many of these women and their children are malnourished, exposed to disease, and subjected to slavery.’ According to the report, “the countries with the highest number of widows in 2010 were China with 4
New drugs enter the market every new day and make their way to new markets mainly in developing countries, says a report released by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). Lax regulations, populations in economic transition let drug abuse flourish in such countries. “The global number of people using amphetamine-type stimulants (ATS) – estimated at arou
Jean Drèze is one of those development economists who have gone way beyond classrooms and seminars and helped shape policies. He has worked with Amartya Sen as well as served as a member of the previous National Advisory Council. Drèze shared his views on food security with Prasanna Mohanty. Are you in favour of direct cas
Will India achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by the 2015 deadline? It certainly does not look so, says a report of an UN study, With only five years left for the target year, the report says that the South Asia is not expected to eradicate poverty in half by 2015. According to Millennium Development Goals Report 2010, India is expected to reduce its poverty rate from 51 percent in
The UPA II in the first year has failed to live up to people’s expectations said the rejoinder to the government’s report card. Signaling out price rise on all commodities, which hit the common people the most, it notes "‘unfortunately, the government did not do anything to curb prices and the situation kept on worsening." `Rejoinder to Government&rsqu
While the anti-Maoist security drive is making big news, a development initiative is underway quietly, without much public debate and away from the media glare--an initiative that may go a long way in addressing the development concerns of the tribals and help in weaning them away from the ultras. This comes in the form of a legislative move which seeks to actually make them stakeholders
Despite Pakistani government’s tall claims about reining the terror structure in the country, it continues to grow, as its leaders continue to support militancy as a tool of its foreign and domestic policy, says a new US study. The study done by the prestigious think tank Rand says that a rising number of terror plots in the United States have links to Pakistan. “The militan
The UB’s group chairman Vijay Mallya is the richest person with Rs 615 crore net worth to enter the Rajya Sabha in the recently concluded elections for 55 seats. He also admitted to having criminal cases against him. “Dr Vijay Mallya (IND from Karnataka) has declared cases related to FERA act and cheating and dishonesty pending against him,” said the survey conducted by Associ
In recent years the love affair of the public with the higher judiciary seems to be coming to an end. From tainted judges to resisting the public declaration of assets, the role of the higher judiciary has come under intense scrutiny. The common perception is that the judges are retreating behind a cloak of secrecy and refusing to abide by the very standards that they set for others. This is qu
All of us have a Right to Livelihood. Millions of us are without one. We have a Right to Education. About half the country is illiterate. Tribals have a Right to Forest Land. Acres of forests are disappearing. We really don’t know the right figures but anywhere between 27 percent to 77 percent of the country is poor, craving for food. About 46 percent of our childr
One memory that the border security force (BSF) has completely deleted from its records pertains to the killing of nearly a dozen soldiers by the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) along with some villagers. A patrol party of the BSF had inadvertently strayed into an area which fell under the territory of Bangladesh. Much before the party members could realise their mistake, a posse of BDR jawans along wi
The melting of the Himalayan glaciers does not bode well for the Indus, Ganga, Bramhaputra, Yangtze and Yellow rivers as their water supplies could fall by as much as 19.6 percent by 2050 if it continues unabated, says a study. The study, published in the latest issue of Science journal, said that more than 1.4bn people depend on water from rivers of Indus, Ganges and Brahamaputra, Yang
Dr Alok Shukla is among those civil servants who received awards for excellence in public administration from the prime minister on April 21. As secretary, food and civil supplies department, Chhattisgarh, he, along with two of his colleagues, has been credited with turning the much-maligned PDS into a success story. So much so that a sample survey of four districts by the Righ
Cultivating organic cotton gives higher financial security to farmers over the cultivation of Bt cotton, says a Greenpeace report. The report said that in the year 2009-10 farmers in the South India cultivating cotton through organic practices earned 200 percent more net income than farmers who grew Genetically Engineered cotton (Bt cotton). According to report ‘in the reg
Ram Jethmalani’s candidature has so rattled the Bharatiya Janata Party that the party with a difference has holed up all its 79 legislators in Rajasthan in a five-star hotel on the outskirts of Jaipur—a practice so far reserved only for making or breaking a governments and not for winning a Rajya Sabha seat as is the case now. Worse, the party has the required numbers to ensure vict
A report by the UN body forecasts that food prices all over the world are likely to rise by as much as 40 percent in this decade. The report titled OECD-FAO Agricultural Outlook 2010-19 said that rise in prices of wheat and coarse grain will go up by 15 to 40 percent than their average levels between 1997 to 2006. According to report, “Real prices for vegetable oils are ex
The new world is not structured around the United States; it is multipolar, heterogeneous, global, and has different centres of power, says Thierry de Montbrial, president of French Institute of International Relations, a leading French think-tank, in a conversation with Trithesh Nandan. About India, Montbrial feels that the country is growing economically, which is good, but lacks the aspirati
Ask not what your government can do for you; ask what you can do for your government. If you live in Delhi, in fact, this year you don’t even need to ask. Your government has not only pre-empted your query but also has been answering it repeatedly, even long after satiating your inquisitiveness. In the process, it has forced you to pay more for just about every public service and to bear
The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) is optimistic about the wealth creation in Asia’s two biggest countries - India and China. In its latest global wealth report titled –Regaining Lost Ground: Resurgent Markets and New Opportunities - 2010, it named India and China as being faster in wealth creation than any other countries in the world. The report revealed that the two Asian giants w
