A WWF report lists 11 major Asian cities most vulnerable to climate change and says the impacts are already being seen and felt. Action must be taken now to mitigate the effects on the large populations of these cities

By Rashme Sehgal

Let's face it, says UNFCCC chief Yvo de Boer, without financial support the engagement of developing countries in climate change mitigation is inconceivable. Rich countries need to place $ 10 billion on the table to get the action plan moving, besides demonstrating clearly how developing nations can get long-term funding in order to pick up the bill to implement these changes

By Darryl D’Monte

The North-South divide on climate change is very marked. An international congress of journalists held in New Delhi in October 2009 discussed how reporting on the issue could help clinch an agreement at the all-important Copenhagen meet in December

By Freny Manecksha

The melting of natural glaciers due to climate change is a matter of global concern. But in Ladakh, a technique to create artificial glaciers that are designed to melt has rejuvenated agriculture

By Huned Contractor

Chilika Bank$, which got the Livelihood Award at the Vataravan Film Festival 2009, tells the story of Chilika Lake and its people through the eyes of a banyan tree on its banks

By Shreya Bhattacharya

Domestic placement agencies are mushrooming everywhere. A substantial number of domestic workers are trafficked from poor states like West Bengal, Orissa and Jharkhand. But there is no national legislation to protect the rights and ensure the welfare of this huge army of domestic workers

By Manjira Majumdar

Poverty and inaccessibility keep the adivasi children of six villages in Birbhum district, West Bengal, out of government schools. But they are getting an innovative and creative non-formal education at Suchana. A storybook written and illustrated by the children themselves has just been published

By Monideepa Sahu

Agni Raksha devotes itself to burns victims, who need expert and expensive reconstructive surgery, besides counselling and emotional support. Women are often the victims, battling both physical and emotional scars, and forced by circumstances to return to the very husbands who inflicted the damage

The government’s move to scale up and subsidise community health insurance schemes while doing nothing to improve healthcare service delivery is a flawed strategy. It’s like getting PDS shops to distribute mango kernels and mahua seeds as drought relief instead of foodgrains since the poor survive on these anyway, says Oommen C Kurian

KS Subramanian was part of an independent citizens’ fact-finding mission to Manipur that presents its findings in the capital on November 23. This article traces the history of violence in the strife-torn state and analyses the deteriorating situation since July 23, 2009

The judiciary is always wary of intruding into the terrain of the legislature and executive. But increasingly, says Mukul Sharma, the courts in South Africa, Gambia and now in India with the Mayawati memorials case, feel it is their duty to question government’s resource allocation and policy prioritisation

We are seeing the emergence of a new wave of Climate Capitalism, driven by the new market for green technology, carbon-trading, technology transfers and adaptation funds, writes John Samuel. But surely the ethics and politics of climate change need to precede the economic calculus of climate change?

By Rajashri Dasgupta

Thirty years after CEDAW, does the Convention really serve a useful purpose? Sunila Abeysekera, Sri Lankan human rights campaigner who heads International Women’s Rights Action Watch Asia Pacific, says the Convention is a good space for democratic countries to reaffirm that they respect women’s rights

By Moushumi Basu

Ramnika Gupta of Jharkhand is a chronicler of marginal cultures. She has scoured the country to document the wonderful diversity of tribal literature that goes back 3,000 years, told in 90 known tribal languages in India

Lawrence Liang is disappointed with Amartya Sen’s ‘The Idea of Justice’, which seems to offer us a competing political theory, but not necessarily a competing political vision

A turned-away tiger complains to the Supreme Court. Ashish Kothari reports on this strange case from the Maharashtra-Madhya Pradesh border

By Gurumurthy Kasinathan

The Kerala government employs free and open source software. Even the BJP and CPM have announced their support of FOSS. But the Maharashtra government recently announced an MOU with Microsoft for teacher training using Microsoft programs. Wouldn’t it have been better to train the teachers in FOSS applications that are available to everyone and signify equity and democracy in society?

Policymakers say that the size of the pie in developing countries has to be enlarged before it can be distributed more equitably. But the way a country’s economy grows will determine whether there is anything left to distribute at the end of the growth process, says Aseem Shrivastava

By Kalpana Sharma

The urban poor do not worry about earthquakes or floods as much as they do about fires that frequently destroy their inflammable, densely-packed dwellings. In Mumbai, where half the population lives and works from slums, there is no disaster management plan, and only 1,503 fire hydrants out of 10,371 work