The right to food has gained significant recognition in Africa, Asia, Latin America and South Asia, but more national institutional reforms are needed to ensure that the fight against hunger is rooted in legal mechanisms, a United Nations expert has said. “Boosting food production should not be confused with realizing the human right to food,” said Olivier De Schutter, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food. “If the international...

This is a story of a bunch of gritty women in a small Andhra village who used their traditional resources and knowledge to fight poverty and create a source of livelihoods for others. A group of 34 women, most of them illiterate, at village Pyalayaram, which falls in Deccan region of Zaheerabad mandal in the state of Andhra Pradesh.decided to set up a community grain bank with a little help...

“If one goes through the agricultural production history in the last six decades, the number of farmers opting out of agriculture, suicides of hundreds of farmers in the past 10 years, and shrinking cultivation lands are ample proof that our agriculture policy is totally wrong,” says Mr. R. Kulandaisamy a progressive farmer and liquid bio-Fertilizer producer called Tari Biotech in Thanjavur. “Though policy makers and certain sections of the scientific fraternity...

Caste proponents say the census must include questions on caste to establish true caste ratios. Opponents say questions on caste are socially divisive. They also raise a behavioural objection: the very announcement of a caste census could encourage people to claim, fraudulently, that they belong to a caste entitled to reservations. This behavioural objection applies as forcefully to surveys for determining poverty. The National Sample Survey Organization conducts periodic surveys on...

The demand for restoration of caste-based census got a solid boost on Tuesday, with members of the Union Cabinet making a forceful pitch for the enumeration of OBCs nationally. A decision on the issue was deferred as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh stressed detailed discussions, and there are indications that inclusion of caste as one of the criteria for the census may not be possible for the exercise that is already...