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The ruling party as well as the opposition in India may try, from time to time, to salve their conscience and maintain their political support base by showing their concern for the poor and the deprived. But they only expose themselves as committed essentially to the interest of those strata of society, which has gained from economic growth during the period of planned development and, since 1991, from market-driven economic growth.

The United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) has recommended that the vaccination against rotavirus be included in all national immunization programmes, because this virus is responsible for over 500,000 diarrhoeal deaths annually.

Since fighting broke out last month between Government forces and armed opposition groups, almost 100,000 people have been driven from their homes in the capital, Mogadishu, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNCHR) has reported.

The world's cereals output is predicted to be 2,219 million tons in 2009, almost 3 per cent lower than in 2008, and the growth in consumption to slow to 1.3 per cent in 2009-2010, compared to 4 per cent in the previous period that breacked all the earlier records, a new United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization report said.

The world is becoming increasingly unsafe for women and girls. Only a change in attitudes or behaviour that condones or perpetuates violence against women can improve the situation, but who cares. We resort to only adhocism like one that is recently shown by the world's two top agencies UN-Habitat and UNIFEM when they signed a memorandum of understanding.

The United Nations World Food Programme has despatched nearly 100 metric tons of urgently-needed food to north-west Pakistan as part of an innovative new scheme to help the more than 2 million people displaced by clashes between the Government and militants.

If ordering hikes in the prices of petrol, diesel, cooking gas or kerosene oil before the Lok Sabha election was no good for the ruling Congress-led political combination, logically it can't be any better for the same ruling group after the election. The reason is simple: it is against the interest of the poor.

Neither society has become inclusive nor the economy, but in the name of doing so Dr Manmohan Singh government worked diligently to change some policies and programmes.

Will the Congress follow its newly-crafted “ekla chalo” policy in Maharashtra where Assembly elections are due in October this year? The Congress-NCP combine has ruled the state for the last nine years. The success of the Congress strategy of going it alone in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, where its former allies were humbled in the 2009 elections, has encouraged the Maharashtra Congress leaders to go solo.

An Asian Development Bank (ADB) Economic Working Paper has tried to reinterpret Pakistan's Economic Crisis, which contains such policy advice that differs markedly from that of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).