Mokhada, Maharashtra: In the last 15-16 years, Jhaluriben Baria has had eight children, two of whom died within five days of their birth. Her youngest child Heera Gopabhai Baria, a boy, is seven months old. The infant is ensconced in a plastic sack strung across two sticks at the entrance of their house in Panchyasan village in Devgadh Baria block of Dahod district, Gujarat. Playing alongside is his sister, Premilaben Baria....
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The task of making the PDS work by Jean Dreze
The planned National Food Security Act represents a unique opportunity to achieve gains with respect to the public distribution system. However, the current draft is a non-starter. When I first visited Surguja district in Chhattisgarh nearly 10 years ago, it was one of those areas where the Public Distribution System (PDS) was virtually non-functional. I felt constrained to write, at that time, that “the whole system looks like it has been...
More »More agricultural investment vital to combat hunger in Asia-Pacific, says UN official
The Asia-Pacific region – home to two-thirds of the world’s one billion malnourished people – must see growth in agricultural investment to tackle the hunger challenge, a senior United Nations official stressed today. The number of hungry people in Asia and the Pacific climbed by more than 60 million in 2009 to 642 million, Jacques Diouf, Director-General of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), said in a video message...
More »Poverty up, poverty down by D Tushar
In April, India’s Planning Commission accepted recommendations put forth by the so-called Tendulkar Committee on a new poverty headcount for the country. Constituted by the Planning Commission under economist Suresh D Tendulkar, the committee, after four years and a new methodology, arrived at a new figure for the number of Indians living below the poverty line: 37.2 percent, ten points higher than the previous official figure. With the government’s subsequent...
More »Agri-growth and malnutrition by Ashok Gulati, T Nanda Kumar & Ganga Shreedhar
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...
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