-GRIST Media If hard work and enterprise inevitably made you prosperous, every rural woman would be a millionaire. These women have borne the brunt of the radical, often brutal transformation of rural India these past two decades. Our writers examine the hardships they continue to face as well as their remarkable vision to solve some of the greatest problems of our times such as food security, environmental justice and developing a...

-The Hindu Ignoring hunger and malnutrition will have significant costs to any country's development. Nutrition improvement has both intrinsic and instrumental value One of the disappointments in the post-reform period in India has been the slow progress in the reduction of malnutrition, especially with reference to the underweight among children. In fact, the rate of change in the percentage of underweight children has been negligible in the period 1998-99 to 2005-06; the...

-The Hindu A well recharge pit was also dug for harvesting the rains Appiyampatti, a small hamlet in Dindugal district of Tamil Nadu, is one among the several villages in the state which has been facing a severe drought for the past over five years. Even during such a critical phase when several farmers left farming and started moving out in search of alternative work Mr. V.Chellamutu remained anchored in the village to...

-Economic and Political Weekly The cultivation of geneticallymodified crops, especially Food crops, is not just a domestic issue; it has an impact on global food trade as well. Sukhpal Singh (sukhpal@iimahd.ernet.in) is at the Centre for Management in Agriculture, IIM, Ahmedabad. There is no doubt that the application of biotechnology can lead to yield improvement, cost cutting and lower crop losses, besides providing more processable raw materials and designer products. That is why...

-PTI Washington: India-born Mexican scientist Sanjaya Rajaram has been awarded the World Food Prize 2014 for agricultural research that spurred an astonishing increase in world wheat production. The 71-year-old Rajaram, however, played down his contribution and thanked farmers for their "innovative spirit". "It is a collective achievement rather than that of a single person," the scientist told the award ceremony audience at the Iowa State University in America. The award "honours the innovative spirit...