-The Times of India In the decade or so that i was at the Planning Commission, i always had advisory responsibility for the food ministry/public distribution system, among other issues of development policy. It did not take very long to find out that the fundamental problem with the system was about so-called "leakages" abetted by corruption: One soon learnt that the Food Corporation of India (FCI) was one of the most...
More »SEARCH RESULT
Junk food hurting world economy, UN warns
-AFP ROME: The UN's food agency on Tuesday said obesity and poor nutrition weigh heavily on the global economy and told governments that investing in food health would bring big economic as well as social returns. Lost productivity and spiralling health care bills linked to malnutrition "could account for as much as five per cent of global gross domestic product (GDP)," equivalent to $3.5 trillion (2.6 trillion euros) a year, the Food...
More »A wrong diagnosis
-The Business Standard NAC shouldn't have seen growth as the enemy of welfare For the nine years of the United Progressive Alliance government, the National Advisory Council led by Sonia Gandhi and including many well-known people from the corporate and non-governmental organisation world - mostly those with a left-of-centre perspective - has been the focus of much attention. The conventional narrative is that the NAC represented Sonia Gandhi's socialist instincts, and regularly...
More »India to have 348 million internet users by 2017: Cisco
-PTI NEW DELHI: India has the fastest internet traffic growth globally and is expected to have 348 million users by 2017, a study by networking giant Cisco said. According to Cisco's Visuals Networking Index (VNI) forecast (2012-17), internet traffic in India will reach 2.5 exabytes per month in 2017, up from 393 petabytes per month in 2012. One exabyte equals 1 million terabytes. "In India, there will be 348 million internet users in...
More »The Neglect of Health, Women and Justice-AK Shiva Kumar
-Economic and Political Weekly A report on the 2013 deliberation of the Kolkata Group at its 10th workshop which focused on healthcare, the status of women and social justice in India. A K Shiva Kumar (akshivakumar@gmail.com) is convener of the Kolkata Group workshops which are organised by Pratichi (India) Trust, the Harvard Global Equity Initiative and UNICEF India. At the 10th annual Kolkata Group workshop in February this year, 40 policymakers, development practitioners,...
More »