People

For those still high after the "spectacular" Opening Ceremony of the Commonwealth Games, there's something that ought to bring them down a peg or two — India is Number One in the world in terms of the number of hungry people. And that would be 237.7 million at the last count. Proud moment for us all. No? The sobering number comes from The State of Food Insecurity in the World report released by the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) on Wednesday. The study is a...

Languages have their own laws of evolution, ones that are not too different from those about species. Some languages survive, grow. Others become extinct. Some merge themselves into other languages. Others combine with another, and a third is born. The history of linguistic evolution is the history of dead languages. Humanity is a melting pot of cultures and languages are in a flux. Changes take place all the time, but most of these are not always discernible since the mutations are usually...

About one fifth of the Oldest Old in India experience any type of abuse from those they live with. Daughters-in-law and sons emerge as the major abusers with 75 per cent and 60 per cent. In one tenth of cases, daughters and grandsons are abusers. Patna is the worst for these people with 60 per cent reporting abuses, followed by Kolkata (36 per cent) and Mumbai (23 per cent). None of the Oldest Old in Ahmedabad reported to have faced any kind of abuse. India has a population of 80,38,718...

Energy giant Shell's new Brazilian joint-venture partner is producing biofuels from land taken from an impoverished Indian tribe. Last month, Shell signed a $12 billion deal to produce biofuels from sugar cane with Brazilian biofuels giant Cosan. But some of Cosan’s sugar cane is grown on land officially recognised as belonging to Guarani Indians. A Brazilian prosecutor with constitutional powers to defend indigenous rights in court, has written to Shell warning that its involvement in the joint...

Poachers targeting rich fishing grounds in the Andaman Islands are endangering the world’s most isolated tribe. More than a hundred iIllegal fishermen from Burma have been arrested in recent weeks. Fourteen were fishing off North Sentinel Island, home to the Sentinelese tribe, who attack anyone approaching their island. Members of the tribe killed two fishermen in 2006. Burmese and local Indian poachers also threaten the survival of the Jarawa tribe, who have only had contact with outsiders...

For a country where the bulk of its population is below 25, here's a finding that won't surprise many: a majority of people from India do not consider themselves to be old – more than the international average. But here's something that not many would know: Indians in the age group of 18-24 years fear heart diseases most in old age (25 per cent) followed by diabetes (24 per cent) and cancer (16 per cent). The findings are from Bupa Health Pulse 2010, an international healthcare survey which...

For a country which has a full-fledged ministry dedicated to its expatriates around the world, and also conducts an ostentatious Pravasi Bharatiya Divas with considerable sound and fury, it is rather astounding and lamentable that the government is yet to speak out against the persecution of the oldest Indian diaspora population – the Roma – in Europe. France has deported around 1,000 Roma to Bulgaria and Romania since August and has been accused by Amnesty International of "stigmatising" the...

In a society and during times, when money is said to be a determinant for almost everything, it is not surprising to see researchers striving hard to link it with happiness. The most recent one points out that money does buy happiness, or something close to it, but the effect diminishes above incomes of $75,000 a year. Now that’s a lot of money needed to purchase happiness, you will concur. That would be more than Rs 32 lakh a year in India. The research by Princeton University’s Daniel Kahneman...

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s assertion that the Supreme Court should stay out of the realm of policymaking is valid. But his contention that his government cannot give to the poor the grains that are rotting in State godowns is not. If anything, it is an anti-people emotion. The Prime Minister was interacting with senior editors at his residence, when he made these points. He went on to insist, “How can foodgrains be distributed free to an estimated 37 per cent of the population which lives...

On August 10, a frantic message landed in the mailbox of members of a Facebook group called Save Niyamgiri. Two leaders of the Dongria-Kondh tribe’s resistance to a controversial mine in Orissa’s Lanjigarh were said to have been abducted, and had subsequently gone missing. The two men were reported to have been ambushed at the base of the hill range where they live, bundled into a vehicle at gunpoint, and driven away. They were not being held at local police stations, Lanjigarh or Muniguda. A...