-The Hindu Ignoring hunger and malnutrition will have significant costs to any country's development. Nutrition improvement has both intrinsic and instrumental value One of the disappointments in the post-reform period in India has been the slow progress in the reduction of malnutrition, especially with reference to the underweight among children. In fact, the rate of change in the percentage of underweight children has been negligible in the period 1998-99 to 2005-06; the...

-Economic and Political Weekly   The decision to reduce the powers of the drug pricing body goes against the interest of public health. The decision of the Government of India to withdraw the power of the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) to set price controls on drugs that are not on the National List of Essential Medicines (NLEM) raises questions on the Narendra Modi regime's commitment to people's welfare. One must ask if...

-The Hindu Business Line   The media have got it wrong on price control reversal Recently, there has been a flutter in various media channels and newspapers as to how the Modi Government has reversed certain drug price control measures announced in July 2014. As a result, we are told, prices of these drugs would increase much more than pre-July levels. This was supposed to be a sequel to Modi's visit to the...

-PTI In August last year, Parliament was informed that Maharashtra had witnessed 37 farmer suicides due to agrarian reasons The number of farmer suicides in Maharashtra is higher compared to other states in the country, Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh said today. "As compared to other states, farmers suicides are maximum in Maharashtra," Singh said without disclosing the details, on the sidelines of a book launch here. Asked about the reasons for growing...

-The Hindu Agroforestry promotes productive cropping environments, prevents deforestation, protects watersheds and enables agricultural land to withstand extreme weather events Growing trees on farms is a triple-win strategy for combating simultaneously the challenges of increasing food production, mitigating greenhouse gases and adapting to climate change. It is an instrument of Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA), catapulted to centre-stage by President Obama's launch of the Global Alliance for CSA at the World Climate Summit on...