-Oxfam Blog As Oxfam’s two week online debate on the future of agriculture gets under way, John Ambler of Oxfam America imagines how it could all turn out right in the end. It is now 2050. Globally, we are 9 billion strong. Only 20% of us are directly involved in agriculture, and poor country economies have diversified. Yet we all have enough food. Technological innovation has played its part, but increased production...
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Chulha smoke choking Indian women, kids -Kounteya Sinha
-The Times of India High blood pressure (BP) has become the world's deadliest disease-causing risk factor. But for Indians, indoor air pollution (IAP) — emanating from chulhas burning wood, coal and animal dung as fuel — has been found to be a bigger health hazard for Indians. The first-ever estimates of the contribution of different risk factors to the global burden of disease between 1990 and 2010 has found that household air pollution...
More »Indians now live longer, but in poor health in old age: Study -Kounteya Sinha
-The Times of India First the good news: Indians are living much longer than they did 40 years ago. The life expectancy (LE) at birth of an average Indian male has gone up by 15 years between 1970 and 2010, while that of an Indian woman by 18 years. An average Indian man can expect to live for as long as 63 years, while an Indian woman can live 4.5 years longer than...
More »Retail FDI: an imagined solution-VK Madhavan
-Live Mint FDI or not, there are problems that plague Indian agriculture and will need to be fixed first With the parliamentary vote on foreign direct investment (FDI) in multi-brand retail out of the way, the government will proceed with the liberalization of this sector as it thinks it will improve the prospects of agriculture. Should we be worried about our small neighbourhood stores shutting down? The fears are overblown. Organized large-format retail...
More »FDI in retail: To empower dalits, do away with India’s antiquated retail trading system-Chandra Bhan Prasad and Milind Kamble
-The Economic Times A couple of months ago, the UPA government cleared Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in retail. It is a politically risky step. But for once, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh showed both spine and spunk biting the bullet. Since then, both Left parties and the BJP have expressed serious reservations over the decision. The general view is that it will affect the lakhs of small, indigenous kirana stores spread across...
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