The National Food Security Bill, 2011, designed to make access to food a legal right, is the last chance to convert Gandhiji's vision of a hunger-free India into reality. What Mahatma Gandhi said of the role of food in a human being's life in a 1946 speech at Noakhali, now in Bangladesh, remains the most powerful expression of the importance of making access to food a basic human right. Gandhiji also...

Agriculture specialists convening in Bern to debate the question of how to feed the world have agreed on one thing: a new paradigm is needed. Farming models are breaking down – as witnessed by the suicide of a farmer every half hour in India - and new directions for research in agriculture for development are needed to support the sector and combat global poverty. A joint conference hosted by non-government organisation Swissaid...

A blockade-choked Manipur could be facing an HIV epidemic because of condom shortage, forcing the AIDS Control Society to consider airlifting rubber to the state. The Sadar Hills District Demand Committee imposed an economic blockade along Imphal-Jiribam and Imphal-Dimapur highways on July 31 in support of the creation of Sadar Hills district. The United Naga Council imposed another blockade on August 21, to oppose inclusion of Naga villages when the Sadar Hills...

India will take at least 17 more years before it can reach the World Health Organization's ( WHO) recommended norm of one doctor per 1,000 people. The Planning Commission's high-level expert group (HLEG) on universal health coverage (UHC) - headed by Dr K Srinath Reddy - has predicted the availability of one allopathic doctor per 1,000 people by 2028. It has suggested setting up 187 medical colleges in 17 high focus...

-The Business Standard   After generating much controversy back home on the Planning Commission's “unrealistic definition” of poverty line, India had to field some tough queries in Washington over the matter. Chief Economic Advisor Kaushik Basu said the government was looking at various parameters of poverty estimates to provide better coverage to the vulnerable section through a proposed food law. "...now we are going to go into a new food security programme, where we...