The Food Security Bill, approved by a group of ministers this month, has ignored Malnutrition as a subject, surprising many observers in UN bodies. The reason given is a turf war among different central ministries. According to N C Saxena, a member of the National Advisory Council that has opposed the government’s draft of the Bill, the women and child development ministry was against including the subject in the Bill as...

Breakthroughs in the production and productivity of wheat and rice in the sixties and of cotton recently have been much appreciated, but similar advances in maize have gone largely unnoticed and unsung. Maize output has soared in the past 10 years from a mere 12 million tonnes in 2000-01 to over 21 million tonnes in 2010-11. This increase can largely be attributed to a surge in crop productivity rather than...

Developing countries will now have to battle IP issues related to new agricultural technologies at WIPO instead of WTO The World Intellectual Property Organization has announced clearly that it intends to play a role—and considering the clout WIPO enjoys it implies a significant part—in promoting intellectual property (IP) in agriculture to enhance productivity. The UN body stepped into this touchy arena with a seminar at its Geneva headquarters that has gone...

The government ignores the NAC, puts out a diluted draft bill on food security As many as 46 per cent of the malnourished children of the world—of whom at least 75,000 die every month—are in India. Another alarming official statistic—36 per cent of Indians live on less than Rs 20 a day. One would think figures like this would act as a reality check for a government that proudly chants...

In the wake of Dreze quitting NAC, Mander vows to fight for changes. Differences between the National Advisory Council (NAC) and the government have come out in the open over the Food Security Bill, which was approved by a Group of Ministers this month. While Jean Dreze, who had earlier quit the working group on food security after recommendations by the members were diluted by the NAC itself, chose to quit the...