India’s Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar has refused to ban Endosulfan, a chemical used widely in India as an insecticide. He blamed farmers for the disastrous effects of this pesticide on people. For instance, Kasargod district of Kerala had reported deaths and permanent disabilities due to the use of this chemical. Pawar said the culprits were the farmers who were spraying the pesticide on the cashew crop against the advice of the Pesticide...

THE world's farmers planted 148m hectares of genetically modified crops in 29 countries last year, according to the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications, an industry body. America is by far the biggest GM farmer, with 66.8m hectares under cultivation, 2.8m more than in 2009. As can be seen in our map, GM technology has been enthusiastically embraced in the Americas and in many Asian countries. By contrast,...

Continued poor performance of some key infrastructure sectors cause for concern As India is on the path of achieving 8.5 per cent economic growth, aiming to exceed the 9 per cent growth mark next fiscal, the biggest worrying factor that could derail this horse power of growth and play spoilsport in the “growth story” of the UPA II government is the poor state of infrastructure and its tardy pace of development...

The first issue in food security is India’s Hunger index. The Global Hunger Index released by International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) places India 67th in rankings with a score of 24.1, far below China and below Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Nepal. According to FAO, about 25% of world’s undernourished live in India. The proposed Food Security Act is seen as the key instrument of intervention to remedy this situation. The...

The United Nations began laying the groundwork today for a global “social protection floor” that would guarantee food security, health services for all and old-age pensions, with a senior official stressing that all that is lacking is the political will for an initiative needing minimum investment. “Social security is a human right. We’ve forgotten that for a very long time, but roughly only 20 per cent of the global population has...