-PTI India has made “impressive” progress in providing primary education to its children but it is still struggling to achieve similar results in lower secondary education and has the largest number of out-of-school adolescents, a UN study said today. According to the study by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) and the Education for All Global Monitoring Report (EFR GMR), 124 million children and adolescents are now out of school...

-Tehelka In these times of agrarian distress, NK Bhoopesh revisits the ‘revolution’ that changed Indian agriculture The growing number of farmer suicides across the country has punched holes in the dominant narrative of India’s rise as a global economic power articulated ad nauseum by big business, mainstream politicians and the corporate media. It has also put a question mark on another familiar tale: that the green revolution introduced in the 1960s was...

-Economic and Political Weekly Direct benefi t transfers in the form of cash cannot replace the supply of food through the public distribution system. Though it is claimed otherwise, DBT does not address the problems of identifying the poor ("targeting") and DBT in place of the PDS will expose the vulnerable to additional price fluctuation. Further, if the PDS is dismantled, there will also be no need or incentive for procurement...

Those who compare India with China on equal basis, could be left with egg on their face if the new Global Food Policy Report 2014-15 is to be read and believed. The recent report from International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) shows why India is still faring much worse as compared to its neighbours including China, in the areas of agriculture and food security. In 2012, China spent close to...

-Down to Earth Study also stresses on positive impact of sanitation on nutrition status of children Brazil, China, India, Indonesia and Mexico may be rising economic powerhouses, but these fast-expanding, middle-income countries are still home to nearly half of the world's hungry people, numbering 363 million, says a new report. In such a scenario, attention must be paid to those living in the "economic middle" to effectively combat hunger and malnutrition on a...