After months of public and internal debate, the National Advisory Council (NAC) — an organisation whose clout and significance derive from the fact that Sonia Gandhi chairs it — has put forth a set of recommendations for the National Food Security Act. The core recommendations are to provide legal entitlements to cereals for 75 per cent of India's population, that is, 90 per cent of the rural population and the...
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Shortage of migrant labour but Punjab’s own farm hands are 48% underutilised, says study by Amrita Chaudhry
Economists’ report says tractors are used for just 178 hrs a year and electric motors are overused That Punjab faces an acute labour shortage each paddy season is a known and established fact. But not many know that 48.66 per cent of the total ‘family labour’ — members of a farmer’s family — available for agriculture remains underutilised in the state. A study of the resources employed in Punjab agriculture throws up...
More »Why rich Indians are malnourished too by Chandra Bhan Prasad
India is the world's 10th largest economy with a GDP of $3.57 trillion and $3,100 as per capita income. Sub-Saharan Ethiopia has the 79th largest economy, with $900 as per capita income. It's far behind India. Yet, Ethiopia and a handful of other sub-Saharan nations beat India in one of the most critical social indices – 35% children in sub-Sahara are malnourished and the figure jumps to 47% for India. Does...
More »Prabhat Patnaik, Professor at CESP, Jawaharlal Nehru University and vice-chairman of the Planning Board of Kerala interviewed by R Krishna
Last month, leaders from 185 countries met in New York to take stock of progress in achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) — which include, among other things, eradicating poverty and hunger, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health — that were set in 2000 by the United Nations. The aim was to achieve these goals by 2015. But 10 years down the line, the world is way behind targets in achieving...
More »What India’s growth story conceals by Abhijit Patnaik
India’s performance at the Commonwealth Games in 2010 has been its best so far – second on the medals list.However, another kind of ‘competition’ ranked 84 countries in accordance with achievements in a different field this week. India was a lowly 67th. The field was hunger, measured by combining the proportion of people undernourished, the proportion of underweight children and the child mortality rate. The Global Hunger Index (GHI) 2010 –...
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