Health ministry instead plans to roll out an integrated national health survey; experts question decision The Union government has decided to discontinue the country’s most reliable and widely tracked health survey, the National Family Health Survey (NFHS), the fourth round of which was to be conducted in 2012-13, in a move that has been criticized by development experts. The ministry of health and family welfare is instead planning to roll out an...
More »SEARCH RESULT
A very crooked line-Prahlad Shekhawat
It is worrying that the Tendulkar method, chosen by the Planning Commission to calculate the poverty line in its latest figures, underestimates the levels of poverty while overestimating poverty reduction. The figures show that 29.8% or 360 million Indians were poor in 2009-10 as compared to 37.2% or 400 million in 2004-05. A poor person has been defined as one who spends R28 per day in urban areas and R22.5...
More »Scientists Claim Their Place in Struggle for Food Security by Fabíola Ortiz
Weather events such as extreme temperatures and drought caused global agricultural losses of 11.4 billion dollars in 2011, while 12 million hectares of farmland are lost to land degradation every year, and unsustainable agricultural practices contribute to the emission of greenhouse gases. These and other data provided by a report released Wednesday in London by leading scientists from 13 countries raise the question of how to curb the environmental crisis, guarantee...
More »Where are farm hands when you need them? by Devinder Sharma
MGNREGA is certainly a good idea. But it can’t be allowed to play havoc with farming operations by weaning away labourers during peak season RURAL DEVELOPMENT Minister Jairam Ramesh recently rubbished the need for freezing the flagship rural job scheme MGNREGA during peak agricultural season. Dismissing the possibility, Ramesh had said: “The matter has been examined by the Mihir Shah Committee and rejected.” Knowing that Mihir Shah’s entry into Planning Commission...
More »Increasing land acquisition could create Food crisis-Rashme Sehgal
The Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) has warned against the increasing leasing and buying of millions of hectares of farmlands in Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America for food and fuel production. This land is being leased to private investors and sovereign wealth funds with no explicit legal agreement on how water will be used on these farmlands. The World Bank has estimated that over 56 million hectares of land in Africa...
More »