South Asia continues to have the largest concentrations of poor rural populations despite the fact that the wider Asia-Pacific region has made major strides in combating poverty, a United Nations agency said today, stressing that agriculture is key to poverty alleviation. The study by the UN International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), entitled Agriculture – Pathways to Prosperity in Asia and the Pacific, shows that rural poverty rates have dropped only...

Late last month we received the exciting news that India now has a population of 1.21 billion. This figure generated less discussion than I expected. Maybe it would have been more mind-boggling a few months ago, before all the scams and scandals inured us to the large number of zeros that a billion signifies. Or maybe we were distracted by the other bad news in the census results — the...

The scheme has reduced rural migration and promoted financial inclusion, but needs to create more durable assets. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) – the only government social welfare scheme named after the other Gandhi, not belonging to Nehru-Gandhi family – has recently completed five years. The performance of the scheme, considered a major pillar of UPA government's strategy of inclusive growth, has been a matter of debate. The...

As the World Bank and International Monetary Fund convene for their annual Spring Meetings here, soaring food prices are high on the agenda, prompting some analysts to fast-forward to 2050 and the question of how to nourish the mid-century's estimated world population of 8.9 billion people – the majority of whom will live in developing countries. "More poor people are suffering and more people could become poor because of high and...

India still has a long way to go in achieving food and nutritional security, albeit the country has achieved record production with 5.4% growth in agriculture and allied sector. This was corroborated by Sharad Pawar, minister of agriculture and food processing, while addressing the National Conference on Agriculture for Kharif Campaign-2011 in New Delhi recently. "Record production with 235.88 Mt of foodgrains in 2010-2011 should not lead to complacency as we...