-CNN-IBN   Prime Minister Manmohan Singh released the first-ever citizens' report on child malnutrition in the national capital on Tuesday. "The problem of malnutrition is a national shame," the Prime Minister said. The statistics in the HUNGaMA (Hunger and Malnutrition) report say that every third malnourished child on the planet is an Indian. The report, on the survey conducted by Naandi Foundation, has been made at the insistence of the Citizens' Alliance against...

Not only are the Forest Rights Act and the Panchayats Extension to Scheduled Areas Act routinely violated in Chhattisgarh, the adivasis are also short-changed on legislative representation and reservations in government jobs. As the state cedes land to capital while reducing the adivasis to an ornamental presence, there is increasing assertion of adivasi identity, born out of class predicaments and experiences of displacement as much as notions of indigeneity. Supriya Sharma...

-The Hindu   For no crime other than that he stood alongside a crowd demanding the restoration of electricity supply to his village, Altaf Ahmad Sood was shot dead on Monday. This appalling murder, at the hands of a Central Industrial Security Force picket guarding a power installation at Barnait, a village near Uri in Jammu and Kashmir, makes clear the casualness with which central forces reach for their guns against the...

The world food system today is far too complex for common sense to understand. It raises many questions: If safe, nutritious food is a fundamental right, why are one billion people living with hunger? Why do farmers and Farm workers remain starved/half-starved? Why are people in food-exporting countries living with hunger? If the value of annual global exports in agriculture products is in billions, why are agricultural labourers and farmers...

Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh has rejected Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar’s suggestion on modifying MGNREGA’s guidelines, saying it has not impacted the availability of workers for the farm sector. Ramesh has told Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that on the contrary it has led to major increase in farm wages and kind of works being executed with most of the works being taken up during the off-season periods. In reply to Pawar’s...