-The Hindu Universal electrification will remain a dream unless the government fixes the flaws in its much vaunted scheme to provide power to rural India In his Independence Day speech, the Prime Minister made the statement that “when the UPA Government came to power in 2004, we had promised that we would provide electricity to all villages.” He then went on to say: “Our next target is to provide electricity to each...
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Switch from farm subsidy to farm investment-Ashok Gulati
-The Economic Times With a weak monsoon, farmers and farm labour, agri-investors and policy makers, everyone is looking up in the sky and praying for more water to pour. Farm analysts are debating whether this will lead to a drop of 16 million tonnes of foodgrain, as it happened in 2009, or 38 million tonnes, as it did in 2002. NCAER is projecting 20 million tonnes drop in grain production in...
More »Centre Left Punjab Out of Drought Relief Ambit: Badal
-PTI Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal today alleged that the state was "deliberately left out" by the Centre when announcements were being made for relief packages for states facing drought-like situation. Referring to the relief announced by the Centre for some states like Gujarat, Maharashta and Haryana in view of drought like situation, Badal said "it is unfortunate that Punjab was deliberately left out of its ambit despite the fact that...
More »US politicians must regulate finance to tackle the drought and food-price crisis-Raj Patel
-The Guardian US leaders worked hard to tackle the 1930s drought and food crisis. Today they are supine, offering the hungry only prayers If you're wondering whether the US drought will create a global food crisis, the answer's easy. It's yes, because there's a food crisis already. The latest year for which we have figures is 2010, when 925 million people were declared malnourished. Soon after the number was announced, the World...
More »UN official calls on academics to step up their efforts to fight hunger
-The United Nations A United Nations top official today called on academics to get involved in essential research to help reduce rural poverty and assist small-scale farmers as part of the global fight against hunger. “One of the great challenges we have today is to use academic knowledge to understand and improve the life of rural populations throughout the world,” said the Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), José Graziano...
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