Managing our soil and water resources in a sustainable and equitable manner needs a new political vision, which can be expressed through the proposed Land Acquisition Bill and the recently formed Global Soil Partnership. On the basis of a proposal I had made three years ago, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) launched a Global Soil Partnership for Food Security and Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation at a multi-stakeholder conference, held...

Have you heard of the Yangtze River Dolphin? For the longest time, it used to be found along 1,700 kilometres of the middle and lower reaches of the mighty Chinese river. The Baiji, as it is known, was white finned, a little over two metres long, had poor eyesight and relied mainly on sonar for navigation. A few decades ago, as populations along the river grew, as shipping traffic rose,...

The famine in the Horn of Africa is being seen as an inevitable consequence of drought, "the worst for 60 years". But this famine was almost entirely preventable, and presenting it as a natural disaster doesn't help; nor does our insistence on waiting for a major crisis before responding. Even though lessons about how to prevent famines have been documented time and time again, we don't learn. The conflict in Somalia...

Failure to notify rules under the Act will deprive it of Central funds The Centre has warned Karnataka and several other states that their failure to notify rules for implementation of the Right to Education Act (RTE) would cost it funding for opening of new schools in the State under Sarva Siksha Abhiyan (SSA). If RTE rules were not notified soon, the Ministry of Human Resource Development will also deny the states...

The Planning Commission has approved irrigation projects worth an estimated Rs.2 trillion over the past year-and-a-half to bolster India’s food security, but analysts say most of the money will not be utilized because of corruption and poor execution. A total 141 projects costing Rs.1.3 trillion were cleared in 2010 alone, according to an internal Plan panel paper on investment clearance of flood control, major and medium irrigation projects and renovation and...