Nearly 65% of adults in the Arab region remain excluded from formal financial systems, according to a new report by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA). The Annual SDG Review 2025 paints a sobering picture of persistent financial exclusion that is undermining the region’s ability …
status: Almost no tourism; crafts trade only Rs 900 crore potential: Eco- and religious tourism can generate Rs 1,000 crore revenue, while handicrafts can turn in Rs 3,500 crore strategy: Revive confidence by reviving governance Some 1,400 empty, rotting houseboats ringing the Dal Lake provide mute testimony to tourism and …
As an economy, reviving Kashmir is not a difficult proposition. The new government, instead of exploring the more difficult option of sourcing resources from outside, has to look inwards. It has to bring about a basic change in the state's policy: from that of dependence to self-dependence. While the government
status: Five per cent of the state's forests are degrading every year potential: Regeneration of the degraded forests can create 120 million humandays of employment strategy: Open up the forests to people and involve them in regeneration and management with benefits A 150-year-old deodar tree
function openspmap(){ var popurl="html/20030430_42map.htm" winpops=window.open(popurl,"","width=500,height=470") } At a time when river networking is being touted as a panacea for the entire country’s water woes, the tide of opinion in Karnataka is turning against the concept. The dissent is moored to a proposed local scheme to divert Nethravathi river. The issue …
a group of 12 European institutional investors has come out with a prescription for the international pharmaceutical industry, exhorting the latter to provide developing countries with easier access to urgently required medicines
Last fortnight I wrote about the different models of water privatisation. Questions continue to haunt me, but let me try and work towards some resolution. Firstly, there is the issue of pricing of water for the relatively rich of the developing world. It is evident that urban and industrial sectors …
It is a story about underground water: when the nectar turns into poison. When a daily task of drinking water from the handpump becomes the source of crippling disease and death. This is not a "natural' disaster
function openmap(){ var popurl="html/20030415_map.htm" winpops=window.open(popurl,"","width=650,height=500,scrollbars=yes") } Welcome to Wah india, a hazy land born of perfidy and malicious grace. Spread over territory co-extensive with 19 states in India, it is both traceable and unknown. Its physical geography, for instance, is quite virtual: Wah india keeps getting discovered; its expanding contours …
The 1970s and 1980s were a time of massive state investment in rural water development. Not only had more land to be brought under irrigation, but also drinking water supplied. These decades saw an exponential rise in the number of privately-owned pumpsets and wells, even as investment in public wells …
The official attitude towards fluoride-laced groundwater is best seen in the manner the state has gone about solutions. In a 1999 nationwide study New Delhi-based Fluorosis Research and Rural Development Foundation (frrdf) found that "only a few laboratories in the country have specified the methodology for fluoride analysis.' Experts claim …
Human negotiation with its own capacities and actions often tends to be triumphalist. A man admires his muscled torso; an elite believes itself to be the omphalos
sop to stay: Populism has prevailed over pragmatism. Bowing to pressure exerted from across the political spectrum, Union finance minister Jaswant Singh has rolled back the proposed hike in prices of fertilisers, which he had announced while presenting the Union budget. The minister had suggested that the price of urea …
Global warming is set to change the investment climate in the corporate world. A 2003 report, Carbon Finance and the Global Equity Markets, identifies changing climate due to rising global average temperature as one of the factors that will influence a company’s competitiveness and profitability. Investors are beginning to revalue …
automobiles Toyota Motor Corp will spend us $34 million to finance the improvement of anti-pollution controls on old, publicly-owned buses in the us even though it did not manufacture them. The company has agreed to do this in order to settle a Clean Air Act lawsuit filed against it by …
the entire gamut of activities that threaten ecosystems in the mountain regions dominated discussions at the meeting of the scientific advisory body to the Convention on Biological Diversity (cbd): from habitat fragmentation, poaching and wildlife trade in the Himalayan belt to grazing pressure, encroachment and fuelwood demand in the Western …
Excessive heat and little light is how I would describe discussions on 'privatisation' of water. Protagonists say this is the magic bullet that will deliver safe water for all. Antagonists insist the private sector is interested only in profit, not in public good. Their claim that "Ganga is being sold …
breaking with tradition, Union finance minister Jaswant Singh chose not to conform to the two-part format while delivering his maiden budget speech on February 28. But there was no departure from practice in this year's Union budget as it was at the end of the day another populist document. No …
In the face of mounting protests against the Comprehensive Wasteland Development Project (cwdp), the characteristically intractable chief minister (cm) of Tamil Nadu (tn), J Jayalalithaa, has been forced to climb down partially. The state government's ambitious programme has been in the eye of a storm ever since it was conceived …
