-Governance Now Magazine turns down red flag raised by a group of experts; says private food manufacturers part of campaign but "harmful" soft drink makers are not Days after a group of independent experts criticised the "commercial exploitation" of malnutrition and said the private sector should be kept out of any crusade against malnutrition, the Lancet, the renowned British medical journal, has advocated just the opposite, saying private players ought to...

Argumentative Indians are at it again! After sparring over the poverty line and the actual number of poor, India's renowned economists have fired up a fresh debate over the extent of malnutrition. In the earlier debate, the Planning Commission ‘reduced' poverty on paper disregarding NSSO and official committees, including the NCEUS, which determined that 77% Indians survived on less than Rs 20 a day. Columbia university economist Arvind Panagariya has...

-Rediff.com Recently, a study on India's State Hunger Index comparing hunger across all India states was released by Purnima Menon, Anil Deolalikar and Anjor Bhaskar. Dr Purnima Menon is a research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute's Poverty, Health and Nutrition Division, and is based at IFPRI's Asia office in New Delhi. She conducts applied nutrition research in the South Asia region, with a focus on programs and policies to improve...

-New Age Asia’s ability to keep food prices in check and ensure long-term regional food security will require the region’s farm to market supply chains to become more efficient and cost-effective, says a new Asian Development Bank  study. The Study titled ‘The Quiet Revolution in Staple Food Value Chains: Enter the Dragon, the Elephant and the Tiger’, was produced by ADB and the International food Policy Research Institute in response to the...

The total expenditure on central schemes for the poor and on the major subsidies exceeds the states' share of central taxes. These schemes are chronic bad performers due to a culture of immunity in public administration and weakened local governments. Arguing that the poor should be trusted to use these resources better than the state, a radical redirection with substantial direct transfers to individuals and complementary decentralisation to local governments...