Development

The genial, lanky man who opens the door to greet you hardly looks like one who should be in the thick of a controversy. But the report of a panel chaired by Madhav Gadgil is today at the centre of a heated debate — that originally hinged on the Western Ghats, but has since been enlarged. Gadgil, in a free-wheeling interview with Subir Ghosh, dwells at length on the Ghats and minces no words about the so-called schism between development and environment. DNA: The report of the Western Ghats...

It’s bad news for Karnataka. Growth is slowing down, and inter-state comparisons of socio-economic development indicate that human development indices are stagnating in Karnataka. The Economic Survey for 2011-12 has revealed that the state fared the worst in terms of growth in 2009-10 with a paltry 3.88%, compared with an all-India average of 7.96%. In contrast, the growth in Uttarakhand was almost three times that of Karnataka — at 11.61%. The slowdown in the state becomes more obvious when one...

Things are not improving in India at all. In fact, things are going from bad to worse. India's rank in the Human Development Index (HDI) of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has fallen from 119 in 2010 to 134 this year. India’s HDI value for 2011 is 0.547—in the medium human development category—positioning the country at 134 out of 187 countries and territories. Between 1980 and 2011, India’s HDI value increased from 0.344 to 0.547, an increase of 59.0 per cent or average annual...

India is simply not doing enough for its women. The country has fallen by one rank &mdash from 112 out of 134 countries in 2010 to 113 out of 135 countries &mdash according to the Gender Gap Index 2011 released by the World Economic forum (WEF) on Wednesday. Over the last six years, while 85 per cent of countries are improving their gender equality ratios, for the rest of the world the situation is declining, most notably in several African and South American countries. The sixth annual World...

Reported violence against Indian women is on the rise. But that’s not because of what you think. A recent study argues that this increase reflects growing willingness to report violence against women, rather than an increase in the incidence of crime. There’s a reason for this too: more women are involved in Indian politics than ever before. The study followed data since the 73rd Amenment to the Indian Constitution that required at least one-third of all seats in local governments to be set...

It is not always that the “people” of this country get to hear good news. And let’s, for once, exclude the privileged like us (who are fortunate to have been born in cities and read these glossies) when we talk of people. Let’s shift our gaze to the heartland, where the “real” India probably lives. It is an India that is rich and poor at the same time. Take a set of maps – that of the country’s forests, minerals, rivers, poor, and tribals together, and superimpose them. You will be taken by...

When Kanupriya Harish took a team from Wells for India around Janadesar village in Rajasthan’s Jodhpur district, it was the routine monitoring visit of a donor agency that had supported a sanitation project in the area. Meeting over, a woman took Kanupriya aside and whispered, “It is because of you that our lives have changed.” That said, she melted away into the crowd. There was no way she could have been recognised – her face was covered, a norm for married women in the desolate landscape of...

Global reports are often academic exercises which don’t mean much if looked at in isolation. But if you take a bunch together, things begin to make sense. In the last one month there have been as many as five such reports – taken together they give us a composite picture about how much India is shining. And yes, also where we stand globally. The first two are similar, but come from different sources – the World Wealth Report 2010 (WWR) from Capgemini and Merrill Lynch Global Wealth Management...

Rich nations such as the United States of offloading food it would not feed its own children to poorer countries as food aid, medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has said. "Foods we would never give our own children are being sent overseas as food aid to the most vulnerable children in malnutrition hotspots in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia," MSF's international president Unni Karunakara said in a statement. "This double standard must stop." MSF said food aid largely does not...

About 166 million people in 22 countries are suffering chronic hunger or difficulty finding enough to eat as a result of protracted food crises. Wars, natural disasters and poor government institutions are exacerbating this state of undernourishment. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said these countries are in what is termed a protracted crisis and said assistance should be refocused for countries around the world suffering from double and triple shocks. Chronic hunger and food...