Coping with climate change and its impact on agriculture and rural livelihoods is going to be a long haul. It’s an irony that those who have caused global warming — the high-emission polluters in developed countries — are going to be the beneficiaries of climate change and not its victims, as far as food production is concerned Read more »
By the time the rabi sowing season for 2009 is over, farming households in the 252 districts declared affected by drought will be further encircled by systems and frameworks over which they have little or no control. This will happen because administrative India is wedded to “area increase and productivity enhancement in targeted districts” as a primary aim. Rural livelihoods are a by-product. Read more »
South Africa’s foreign minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, visited India recently for the India-South Africa joint ministerial commission and IBSA ministerial meeting. She spoke to Faizal Khan about Arab unrest and South Africa’s historic and contemporary relations with India. Read more »
The figures for crop production, yield and acreage are looking healthy in this quarter. But behind the triumph a crisis gathers strength, says Rahul Goswami Read more »
Anganwadis, ICDS and PDS are huge government programmes meant to cater to the health and nutritional requirements of the poor. Yet 72.4% of urban poor children in Madhya Pradesh are underweight, 60.4% are undernourished and almost nine out of 10 are anaemic. The fifth and final part of this series on food security of the urban poor finds out just where these schemes are going wrong. Read more »
A concept note on the proposed National Food Security Act circulated to all states continues to push for a targeted public distribution system instead of a universal one, and proposes to reduce the issue of foodgrains to 25 kg per BPL household, completely ignoring the contentious issue of who is poor and what an adequate and nutritious diet consists of. Read more »
The crisis in four nuclear power plants in Japan following the recent earthquake and tsunami is cause to rethink India’s strategy of boosting nuclear energy capacity and setting up the world’s largest nuclear power plant at Jaitapur. Read more »
Children as young as 10 are working in mines in Bellary district of Karnataka, recent studies and public hearings report. It is the children of displaced and homeless families who are exploited most by the mining mafia. Read more »
A substantial amount of women’s time is devoted to unpaid labour. Yet, much of women’s work is invisible. The productive contribution of household maintenance, provisioning and reproduction is ignored. As a result, inadequate attention is paid to the conditions of women’s work and its economic value. Read more »
Poverty levels are said to have dropped dramatically in countries that provide direct cash instead of subsidies to the poor. Will such a system work in India? A number of schemes in India like the public distribution system (PDS) that provides grain and select food items as well as cooking fuel and fertiliser at subsidised rates to poor families have been criticised because their implementation is so poor that a large amount of the subsidised commodities are diverted into the black market while the intended beneficiaries receive very little. Read more »