WELL before Budget 2010-11 was presented, inflation had emerged as the principal economic problem in the country. With food-price inflation running at close to 20 per cent, even the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government at the Centre had been forced to recognise it as a problem that deserved as much attention as the objective of achieving a 9 or 10 per cent rate of growth, if not more. In fact,...
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See, No Powder by Madhavi Tata
* State-promoted organic farming has picked up in a big way in Andhra Pradesh * The CMSA programme was initiated in 2004 across a mere 400 acres in 12 villages. * Today, it covers 17 lakh acres in over 4,000 villages in the state. The number of farmers participating in CMSA has risen to more than 6 lakh. Call it going back to the roots. Or call it giving the...
More »Shining On Little by Amba Batra Bakshi
Women in 65 villages of Karnal district, Haryana, have transformed their lives through self-help groups and microcredit schemes The infant mortality and maternal mortality rates have both come down substantially 94 per cent of the women now have ante- and post-pregnancy checks Institutional deliveries rising; anaemia in pregnant women down. No girl is married off before she’s 18 Taravanti clearly remembers the time, 19 years ago, when she got married...
More »GMO Crops: A Few Questians to the Genetic Engineering by Sailendra Nath Ghosh
In April last year, the Supreme Court, in response to a public interest litigation filed by the Gene Campaign (whose convenor is the internationally known geneticist Dr Suman Sahai), directed the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) to consider the toxicity and allergenicity of GM crops and to post the relevant material on the web so that independent experts could examine these. The Supreme Court asked the GEAC to study also...
More »The Peel-An-Onion Plan by Lola Nayar
Another food crisis? This time it’s not shortages but prices—a plain failure of responsive policy and execution. Zooming food prices are raising political temperatures yet again. The rumblings, for once, are not merely restricted to the opposition parties, but evident within the ruling coalition as well. Though attacks from across the political spectrum have become a bit subdued of late, the target remains Union agriculture and food minister Sharad Pawar. And...
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