Why is every fourth Indian hungry? Why is every third woman in India anaemic and malnourished? Why is every second child underweight and stunted? Why has the hunger and malnutrition crisis deepened even as India has nine per cent growth? Why is “Shining India” a “Starving India”? In my view, hunger is a structural part of the design of the industrialised, globalised food system. Hunger is an intrinsic part of the...

Patients battling cancer, infections and mental illness joined a rally here today beseeching the government to reject a trade pact with the European Union that they fear will threaten the availability of inexpensive generic medicines in India. An estimated 2,000 people, many among them infected with HIV, walked along Delhi’s Parliament Street on a day when Indian and EU officials were negotiating a free trade agreement in Brussels. Health activists and lawyers...

“To ensure greater cost efficiency, better delivery” Seeking to address the issue of subsidies not reaching the targeted groups, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Monday proposed to provide a direct cash subsidy on fuel and fertilizers to the poor from March, 2012. “To ensure greater cost efficiency and better delivery of kerosene and fertilizers, the government will move toward direct transfer of cash subsidy for people below poverty line (BPL) in a...

The Supreme Court will hear in open court on February 28 the curative petition filed by the Union government seeking enhancement of compensation of $470 million for Bhopal gas victims. The petition said the compensation, determined by the Supreme Court in 1989, was arrived at on the basis of assumptions of truth unrelated to realities. A five-judge Bench comprising Chief Justice S.H. Kapadia and Justices Altamas Kabir, R.V. Raveendran, B. Sudershan...

In 2000, it was grown in a mere 46 hectares in State Cultivation peaked during 2010-11 in 9,020 hectares The commercial cultivation of the Indian Gooseberry (Emblica Officinalis), popularly known as Amla, is fast gaining ground in Tamil Nadu. Amla, called `Nelli' in Tamil, took commercial roots in the State a decade ago. It was a humble beginning then for this wild fruit at a time when other crops such as mangoes, citrus...