The goal of food for all can be achieved only through sustained efforts in producing, saving and sharing foodgrains. The Supreme Court of India has rendered great service by arousing public, professional and political concern about the co-existence of rotting grain mountains and mounting hungry mouths. In several African countries hunger is increasing because food is either not available in the market, or is too expensive for the poor. Food inflation...

Once, during a tour of his constituency in Tamil Nadu, Member of Parliament and former Panchayati Raj minister Mani Shankar Aiyar came across an eight-year-old boy. A chance meeting that he says threw light on why India stagnates at the 134th position in the United Nations Human Development Index. The boy, Aiyar said during a brief pause in his United Nations Millennium lecture at the British Council on Sunday, had got...

The government is likely to make it mandatory for mining companies to hand over a part of their revenues and make annual payments to land losers, bringing compensation rules in this sector in line with a policy followed by the Haryana government which has won the backing of Congress president Sonia Gandhi. But in a sop to companies, which have been unenthusiastic about earlier plans for profit-sharing, the ministry of...

KEY TRENDS   • Maternal Mortality Ratio for India was 370 in 2000, 286 in 2005, 210 in 2010, 158 in 2015 and 145 in 2017. Therefore, the MMRatio for the country decreased by almost 61 percent between 2000 and 2017 *14    • As per the NSS 71st round, among rural females aged 5-29 years, the main reasons for dropping out/ discontinuance were: engagement in domestic activities, not interested in education, financial constraints and marriage. Among rural males aged...

In Vijaypura village, marginalised women, especially widows, have used the RTI tool to procure food grains under PDS and are living a healthy life. The movement, instigated by a young RTI activist, boasts of achieving the millennium goal of reducing hunger by half in the region. It was from the state of Rajasthan that the Right to Information (RTI) movement emerged as an idea that went on to capture national...