India has been lauded for its remarkable overall economic growth of over 8% over the last five years. But despite this high and relatively stable growth, India's underbelly is soft. The agriculture sector is performing below expectations, with growth rate of around 2.8%, it is way below the Eleventh Plan target of 4%. The Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) estimates that 22% of India's population is undernourished. Child malnutrition is...

The Left Front government today tried to woo back poor voters by enacting a law that confers land rights on impoverished families who have forcibly occupied plots and built homes there. Two lakh families, categorised in the bill as agricultural labourers, fishermen and artisans and described as “very poor’’, will benefit from the law. The settlement rights will be given only up to five-and-a-half cottahs and only if the squatters have...

It's perhaps the first time the Union government has rejected an industrial project floated by an MP of its own party. In fact, the ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) has asked Chhattisgarh government to take action against Congress MP and industrialist Naveen Jindal's company, Jindal Power Limited (JPL). Worse, a close look at the exchange between JPL and various government bodies shows the company persisted with the project despite...

Unfettered coal mining is causing unchecked underground fires that threaten human habitation and the environment, writes geologist Dr Nitish Priyadarshi. The haunting inscription that marks the gates of hell in Dante's Inferno could well be true for Jharkhand. For, the underground fires that have been raging in the coalfields of this state over several years are now beginning to engulf its thickly inhabited areas as well. An underground mine fire that has...

The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) have warned that farm commodity prices, especially foodgrains, may rise by as much as 40 per cent by the end of this decade. This warning must be taken seriously given its implications for food insecurity. FAO’s Agricultural Outlook 2010-2019 projects prices of wheat, coarse grains and dairy products rising by 15 to 40 per cent...