Dr Abhijit Sen is Member, Planning Commission of India. He is a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Cambridge (currently on leave as Professor of Economics at the Jawaharlal Nehru University) and has also taught at the Universities of Sussex, Oxford and Cambridge. Besides serving various think tanks in the states and at the centre, Dr Sen has been a consultant with UNDP, ILO, FAO and various other multilateral...

-PTI   Reflecting the utmost priority to address farm sector woes, a first-of-its-kind workshop was held on Wednesday at the initiative of President Pratibha Patil where Prime Minister Manmohan Singh pitched for raising agriculture output to provide food security to citizens.  At the workshop attended by eight Union ministers, 20 governors, five chief ministers and 37 vice chancellors of agricultural universities, Patil underlined the need for "out-of-the-box" solutions to enhance productivity in rainfed...

Industrialised countries are increasingly outsourcing part of their emissions of greenhouse gases to emerging economies such as China and India through global trade, a new study has revealed. The study by an international team of scientists has also shown that greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere have rocketed to unprecedented levels despite the global financial crisis (GFC) two years ago. Although the GFC did lead to a temporary dip in emissions from...

Mihir Shah, member of the Planning Commission and chairman of the committee to redraft rules and guidelines of NREGA, tells Sreelatha Menon that the Act may also cover farm labourers. The consortium of NGOs that recommended changes in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) was founded by you, but your suggestions have been criticised. You seem to consider it a lack of demand rather than a supply problem. First, you should...

The Government has decided to introduce major reforms in the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) by bringing under its coverage agricultural activities like sowing, harvesting, soil preparation, irrigation, compost preparation and allied activities relating to livestock. Reforms have been planned to address issues of shortage of labours for agriculture-related activities. The job guarantee scheme will now have a farmers’ friendly face and rechristened as MGNREGA II. The...