It’s a silent epidemic that we’ve never been able to put a finger on. In debates on food security, the issues of hunger and malnutrition have always been add-ons. But for millions, getting the next meal is the difference between life and death. Four-year-old Akash Sahariya can barely stand up. His bleached hair, distended belly and matchstick arms are harbingers of certain death that awaits him. He is the fourth...

Farmers in the state, already reeling from the impact of a drought that has stalked them for the last two years, now have to prove their “authenticity” to reap the benefits of a crop insurance policy they registered for in 2009. The near-impossible task of checking the veracity of each and every claim, which run into lakhs, will have to be completed before August 31 by the respective district administrations, delaying...

Global fertiliser prices have started to hot up once again, in anticipation of tight supplies in 2010-11 and some significant mergers and acquisitions, which could increase the import bill for India and also make key soil nutrients expensive. In just the latter half of July, prices of key phosphatic fertilisers, urea, DAP, phosphate and potash have shot up in a marked manner. Between July 16 and July 29, phosphate prices...

Technology… the knack of so arranging the world that we don’t have to experience it — Max Frisch, Swiss novelist and playwright Why do MNCs excite extreme emotions in India ? If you take any one of them from banks to pharma and chemicals to defence and aerospace, they are all clubbed together with the “usual suspects” who do more harm than good despite all the good intentions they might have had....

The government plans to set up 750 soil testing laboratories, static as well mobile, across the country by 2012 for improving soil health and productivity. Establishment of 500 new static soil testing laboratories (STLs) and 250 mobile ones has been envisaged under the scheme ‘National Project on Management of Soil Health and Fertility’ during the 11th Plan period. During 2008-09 there were 661 STLs in the country, minister of state for consumer...