Nationwide discussions and intelligentsia offering solutions to clear the rot in the public distribution system appears to have drawn a naught in Uttar Pradesh. In March, officials from the department of food and civil supplies had acknowledged `serious flaw' in the government policy, and said that the process of issuing ration cards in the state was `too liberal'. Six months on, not much has changed in the state. According to...
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Equality is the one item nobody wants on the UN agenda next week by Madeleine Bunting
For all the progress on the millennium development goals, it seems countries are growing richer while leaving their poor behind In less than a week Barack Obama will be sitting down with 191 heads of government in New York to review progress on the most ambitious programme the UN has ever attempted. In 2000 the world signed up to eight goals which included halving those living in poverty, universal primary education,...
More »Indian children still underweight – after 20 years of interventions by Jason Burke
Inefficiency, the global financial meltdown and rising food prices have conspired to reverse progress made on poverty and hunger Head out of Delhi, across the fetid Yamuna river, with the tourist sites behind you and the northern Indian plains in front of you. Go past the new, luxury flats built for the Commonwealth Games, turn right and follow the lines of the new metro and then plunge left, avoiding the chaotic...
More »The Early Kalidasa Syndrome by Utsa Patnaik
Our policymakers would rather let food grains rot than feed the poor. What explains the near-comatose lack of response to a long-brewing crisis of increasing hunger? The most valuable resource that a country has is its people. The poor are not a liability, but an asset; they are the producers of essential goods and services we use, they hold up the sky for us for a pittance of a reward. The...
More »RTI rescues Rajasthan women from hunger, deprivation by Mamta Jaitly
In Vijaypura village, marginalised women, especially widows, have used the RTI tool to procure food grains under PDS and are living a healthy life. The movement, instigated by a young RTI activist, boasts of achieving the millennium goal of reducing hunger by half in the region. It was from the state of Rajasthan that the Right to Information (RTI) movement emerged as an idea that went on to capture national...
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