-The Economic Times Ram Kishen, 52, half-blind and half- starved, holds in his gnarled hands the reason for his hunger: a tattered card entitling him to subsidised rations that now serves as a symbol of India's biggest food heist. Kishen has had nothing from the village shop for 15 months. Yet 20 minutes' drive from Satnapur, past bone-dry fields and tiny hamlets where children with distended bellies play, a government storage facility...

-The Independent Drought is good for business, says Glencore chief The United Nations, aid agencies and the British Government have lined up to attack the world's largest commodities trading company, Glencore, after it described the current global food crisis and soaring world prices as a "good" business opportunity. With the US experiencing a rerun of the drought "Dust Bowl" days of the 1930s and Russia suffering a similar food crisis that could see...

-The Hindu The killing of the Ranvir Sena chief and the violence it triggered expose the fragile foundations of Nitish Kumar's ‘new Bihar'   The assassination of Brahmeshwar Singh alias Mukhiya, founder of Ranvir Sena, the dreaded private army of upper caste Bhumihars, raises fears of the revival of “Barbaric Bihar”. From the first major massacre of Dalits in Belchi in 1977 to the killings in Mianpur in 2000 by socially dominant castes...

-Reuters KHAMMAM (India): It was a deal struck almost 40 years ago by a poor, illiterate Indian farmer, driven by desperation after a drought wiped out his crops and left his family close to starvation. The agreement: 10 acres of land, the size of four soccer pitches, for a mere 10 kg (22 lbs) of sorghum grains. "My father-in-law pawned the land for food," said Kowasalya Thati, lifting the hem of...

Over the past week, I’ve chronicled my investigative research on starvation in India – a project I’ve been working on with a colleague from the Centre for Equity Studies, a New Delhi think tank. We’ve told stories of people who were forced to eat poisoned roots to stay alive; a family that suffered the deaths of members from three different generations in a span of 24 hours; a woman faced with...