Posco, whose mega steel project in Orissa’s Jagatsinghpur district hangs in balance after Ministry of Environment and Forests issued a stop-work order last week, has now questioned the Naveen Patnaik government’s plan to reserve 90 per cent jobs in the unskilled and semi-skilled category for “local people” for all upcoming industrial projects. A High Level Clearance Authority of the state government chaired by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik recently cleared a proposal...

The NAC suggests steps to ensure food security, but its recommendation for ‘selective universalisation' of the PDS is criticised. INDIA is home to some 230 million undernourished people – that is, 27 per cent of all undernourished people in the world. Worse still, more than half of all child deaths in India are because of malnutrition, and over 1.5 million children in the country are at the risk of being malnourished...

EVERY OTHER day there is either a newspaper report or an editorial comment lamenting the loss of food grain stored in buffer stocks. Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar, while prophesying a bumper kharif crop, admits he is worried about not having adequate storage for the produce. At a national conference in 2003, the Central Warehousing Corporation said it had covered storage capacity for 48 million tonnes of food grain. In 2002,...

Coimbatore: The Forest Department is embarking on a mission to ensure education for tribal communities. It has joined hands with organisations to impart skills to adults and women for economic upliftment while students are being encouraged to opt for school and college education, by ensuring funds availability for the same. Conservator of Forests, Coimbatore Circle, R. Kannan and District Forest Officer, I. Anwardeen mooted these schemes and they are yielding rich dividends...

The Government of India’s initiative to focus on agricultural development in the eastern states, as represented by the meeting that the Union ministers for finance and agriculture attended in Kolkata last week, is welcome if belated. Some may see this as a pre-election gimmick with an eye to elections in Bihar and Bengal. But there is no gainsaying the fact that the region’s agricultural economy needs a productivity boost. Among...