-The Times of India CHENNAI: At a time when fears of another drought year are looming large, an RTI application filed by TOI has revealed that the quantity of foodgrains damaged in Food Corporation of India godowns across the country recorded a drastic jump over the last two years when the country lost more than 40,000 tonnes. Though the losses are attributed to natural calamities like cyclone and floods, experts say...
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The Importance of Being 'Rurban': Tracking Changes in a Traditional Setting -Dipankar Gupta
-Economic and Political Weekly A categorical distinction is facing rough weather--that between urban and rural. If we take just agriculture, there is so much of the outside world that comes in not just as external markets but as external inputs. Further, many of our villages barely qualify as rural if we were to take occupation alone. So the earlier line that separated the farmer from the worker in towns is slowly...
More »In India, to be veg is to drink a lot of milk -Harish Damodaran
-The Indian Express From NSSO data comes a key feature of vegetarianism: states that consume more milk go slow on egg, fish, meat. Being vegetarian means having a diet loaded with dal, sabzi and phal, right? Wrong — when it comes to India, at least. Average household monthly per capita expenditure (MPCE) on vegetables and fresh fruit is higher in fish- and beef-eating Kerala than in “vegetarian” Madhya Pradesh, whose Chief Minister...
More »Raise short-duration crops to counter poor rains, farmers told -Sandip Das
-The Financial Express To deal with the possibility of a deficit monsoon, the agriculture ministry has suggested sowing of short- duration varieties of paddy, pulses, oilseeds and other less water-intensive crops in the northern India regions for curbing possible crop losses. In its first advisory for the northern Indian region, Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), a premier institute under the ministry of agriculture, has suggested transplanting of short duration paddy varieties of...
More »Caste, class and eggs -Jean Dreze
-The Times of India Blog Chouhan and other state leaders must not ban this super-food for growing children from midday meals Many Indian states have started providing eggs with midday meals, either in schools or in anganwadis or both. This is the best thing that has happened for a long time in the field of social policy. Indian children are among the most undernourished in the world. They are starved of protein, vitamins,...
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