-Scroll.in JNU professor Himanshu says the economic slowdown is not the result of a one-off event like demonetisation, the slump began almost two years ago. The economy is in a trough. The first quarter of 2017-2018 saw the growth of gross domestic product (the total value of all goods and services produced in a country in a year) drop to 5.7% from 7.9% in the corresponding period last year – the...

-GovernanceNow.com The cost of maintaining our 5.3 million stray cattle comes to about Rs 30,115 core per year A lot of debate that we witness in the media on the cattle question these days suffer from the disease of speculative utopian imagination of a ‘cow-nation’ and relentless abuses for those beef-eating ‘others’.   Political debates over the question of our bovine stock has mostly been heavily polarising and mindlessly simplistic, notwithstanding exceptions like veteran...

-The Economic Times PUNE: Chicken prices have shot up in recent times and have been hovering above Rs 180/kg (retail rates) in big cities for close to a month now due to an increase in demand because of beef ban and Ramadan. High temperatures too have caused a supply shortage across the country, unlike in the past, when the shortage was restricted to a few regions. Currently , the retail price for...

-Down to Earth Meat eating is not the key issue, it is the amount that is consumed and the manner in which it is produced. This is where India differs. Recently at the release of our book First Food: Culture of Taste, which discusses the link between biodiversity, nutrition and livelihoods, I was asked a question. “Why do you not, as an environmentalist espousing the cause of traditional and local diets that...

-The Indian Express But per capita meat consumption remains relatively low. This has implications for nutritional and food security. In the eyes of the world, India is seen as a vegetarian country. Presumably, this impression has been created by our best brand ambassadors from political, spiritual and yoga circles. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a strict vegetarian. The popular yoga guru, Baba Ramdev, and many other Hindu religious leaders too, are vegetarians...