-Oxfam Blog As Oxfam’s two week online debate on the future of agriculture gets under way, John Ambler of Oxfam America imagines how it could all turn out right in the end. It is now 2050.  Globally, we are 9 billion strong.  Only 20% of us are directly involved in agriculture, and poor country economies have diversified.  Yet we all have enough food.  Technological innovation has played its part, but increased production...

-The Times of India High blood pressure (BP) has become the world's deadliest disease-causing risk factor. But for Indians, indoor air pollution (IAP) — emanating from chulhas burning wood, coal and animal dung as fuel — has been found to be a bigger health hazard for Indians. The first-ever estimates of the contribution of different risk factors to the global burden of disease between 1990 and 2010 has found that household air pollution...

-The Times of India Crest Cash transfers have been described as the world's favourite new anti-poverty device. As India gets set to implement it, TOI-Crest finds out if the politics will ever be divorced from the cash The UPA government's ambitious plan to introduce direct cash transfers (DCT) by January 1, 2013 reflects both the political desperation of a beleaguered government and the urgent need to reform India's inefficient and corrupt public...

-The Times of India Even as one in four deaths worldwide in 2010 was caused by heart disease or stroke the top two killers that have remained constant for the past 40 years human mortality caused by climate change has shown the most dangerous spurt over the last four decades. The Global Burden of Disease Study, 2010, published by the British medical journal, The Lancet, on Thursday shows that there has been...

-Outlook The poverty ratio in Jharkhand declined to 39.1 per cent in 2009-10 from 45.3 per cent five years ago because of economic growth and poverty alleviation programmes, the government said today. "The percentage of people living below poverty line in Jharkhand has declined from 45.3 per cent in 2004-05 to 39.1 per cent in 2009-10. "In terms of number of poor, it has declined from 1.32 crore in 2004-05 to 1.26 crore...