The world’s rich countries boosted government support for agriculture in 2009, according to a report that the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) released last week. The report, “Agricultural Policies in OECD Countries: At a Glance 2010,” is part of the OECD’s annual effort to quantify and assess the support that its 31 developed country members provide to their agricultural producers. The OECD found that the Producer Support Estimate (PSE)...

Acute poverty prevails in eight Indian states, a new ‘multidimensional’ measure of global poverty has said. The measure claims that the eight states put together account for more poor people than those present in the 26 poorest African nations combined. The new measure, called the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), was developed and applied by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) with the United Nation Development Programme’s (UNDP) support. It...

Since she could remember, labourer Rama Nag (34) didn't know what her ration card meant, that as one of India's nearly 400 million officially poor people, she was entitled to subsidised foodgrain. Until 2006, here in the heart of impoverished tribal India, on the edge of the sprawling forests of Bastar and the Maoist zone of Dantewada, Nag and her family of four survived on rice and whatever they could...

The planned National Food Security Act represents a unique opportunity to achieve gains with respect to the public distribution system. However, the current draft is a non-starter. When I first visited Surguja district in Chhattisgarh nearly 10 years ago, it was one of those areas where the Public Distribution System (PDS) was virtually non-functional. I felt constrained to write, at that time, that “the whole system looks like it has been...

The Planning Commission today decided in favour of pumping nearly Rs 14,000 crore into social and physical infrastructure building in some 35 Maoist-hit districts. The plan, formulated at the request of finance minister Pranab Mukherjee, will focus on the National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme, rural roads, health, rural electricity, universal elementary education, child nutrition and health and new residential schools called ashram schools. Later this month, the action plan will be placed...