Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram on Friday launched a special scheme for the well-being and overall empowerment of adolescent girls. The scheme has been launched as a pilot project in 200 most backward districts. ‘Sabla' or the ‘Rajiv Gandhi Scheme for Adolescent Girls' would be launched in 22 districts of Uttar Pradesh, 15 in Madhya Pradesh, 12 each in Bihar and Sikkim, 11 in Maharashtra, and 10 in Rajasthan. To be based...

The forthcoming India visit of the US President, Mr Barack Obama, accompanied by Mr Thomas J. Vilsack, secretary of agriculture, and Dr Rajiv Raj Shah, administrator, United States Agency for International Development (USAID), is significant in the context of strengthening the Indo-US partnership in the field of agriculture production and sustainable food security. Several related issues will be discussed in Mumbai on November 6 and November 7 where an agriculture...

The goal of food for all can be achieved only through sustained efforts in producing, saving and sharing foodgrains. The Supreme Court of India has rendered great service by arousing public, professional and political concern about the co-existence of rotting grain mountains and mounting hungry mouths. In several African countries hunger is increasing because food is either not available in the market, or is too expensive for the poor. Food inflation...

The goal of food for all can be achieved only through greater and integrated attention to production, procurement, preservation and public distribution. The President, in her address to Parliament on June 4, 2009, announced: “My Government proposes to enact a new law — the National Food Security Act — that will provide a statutory basis for a framework which assures food security for all. Every family below the poverty line in...

Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi Tuesday launched a supplementary nutritional food programme aiming to reach about 40 lakh poor beneficiaries through the anganwadi network in the state. 'It is a unique movement to free children and pregnant women from the scourge of malnutrition,' Modi said. It would be undertaken under the aegis of the state government's women and child welfare department as part of the Integrated Child Development Programme. It...