Full Coverage: South Asia

31.08.2009 The Indian cabinet has cleared a proposal for constitutional amendment to provide 50 per cent quota to women in local government, up from 33 per cent.

28.08.2009 Almost half of India is reeling under a drought as a result of insufficient monsoon rainfall, says Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar.

24.08.2009 Kwame Kwei-Armah’s four-part series retracing Queen Elizabeth’s 1954 royal trip, On Tour With The Queen, is odd but quietly engaging.

23.08.2009 Jeffery Sachs, supposed UN champion of the poor, has no time for the Copenhagen process as a means to fight climate change. InfoChange

23.08.2009 Indian environmentalists borrow the photo-opportunity tactics of western campaign groups in a drive for renewable energy legislation. InfoChange

18.08.2009 Floods caused by heavy rains unnecessarily threaten more than 260,000 displaced Tamil civilians whom the Sri Lankan government has unlawfully detained in camps in the north, according to an international rights group.

17.08.2009 This story encapsulates the energy-technology-climate debate across the developing world. The Indian government has great plans for renewable energy but is confused about paying for it. Guardian

17.08.2009 News from India of a variety of rice which will survive periods without rain. BBC

13.08.2009 As food security deteriorates in Nepal, development agencies remind the government about human rights obligations. IRIN News

13.08.2009 The Government of India makes another attempt at getting poor children into school. Legislation is only part of the answer. BBC

11.08.2009 As hundreds of thousands of Pashtuns and other minorities return home, Pakistan’s government must provide security, reconstruction and long-term development in order to avoid recreating the conditions that caused them to flee in the first place, says a new report.

09.08.2009 Only a small proportion of voters went to the polls in the northern Sri Lankan town of Jaffna where elections to the municipal council were held have been held for the first time in 11 years.
+ The dawn of democracy?
+ Pro-rebel party wins one Sri Lanka council
+ 'LTTE network shattered forever'

07.08.2009 The Sri Lankan government announced the arrest of "the new leader of the Tamil Tiger rebels", in a foreign country, today.
+ What the captured LTTE leader revealed on the Web

05.08.2009 The launch of Primark’s second biggest UK store in Bristol next week will be marked by a demonstration over the conditions faced by 7p-an-hour workers making its clothes.

04.08.2009 The Indian government should take major steps to overhaul a policing system that encourages human rights violations, an international rights group said today.

03.08.2009 Immigration proposals unveiled by the British government on Monday are wrong because they target legal rather than illegal migrants and discriminate against people from the Indian subcontinent, according to Keith Vaz, chairman of parliament's home affairs committee.

03.08.2009 Despite promises by G8 leaders to prioritise food security, the World Food Programme is in trouble with its budget for 2009. Cuts in school feeding programmes highlight the contrast with school meals provided in richer countries.