Industrialisation of agriculture creates hunger and malnutrition, destroying the food web to which we all belong. Hunger and malnutrition is manmade. It is in the design of the industrial chemical model of agriculture. And just as hunger has been created by design, producing healthy and nutritious food for all can be designed through food democracy. That is what we do in Navdanya. That is what the diverse movements for food sovereignty...

-The Economic Times At a time when the Rangarajan committee is giving final touches to its recommendations on sugar deregularisation, The Union food ministry has come up with two proposals for fixing new retail price of sugar sold in ration shops (levy sugar) to reduce the food subsidy bill. According to the first proposal, the food ministry has recommended to free up the prices of levy sugar and allow state governments to...

-The Economic Times The Centre plans to make bank creditaccess easier for rural population, especially in states were poverty is high. In Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra and Gujarat, the gap between credit available to self help groups and the demand for credit is stark. At present, 80 per cent of all bank support to SHGs is in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala. In Uttar Pradesh, Madhya...

-Live Mint The current policy on compensating landowners could adversely affect character of India’s future growth The Parliament is currently considering a land acquisition, rehabilitation and resettlement Bill (LARR Bill), as are various state legislatures. These are likely to affect the pace and character of future growth in India in a significant way.  Setting up new industries, service establishments and real estate development will inevitably require land to be acquired from rural areas....

-People's Democracy IT seems the Sheila Dixit government of Delhi, backed by powerful elements in the UPA-2 central government, will let nothing stand in the way of water privatisation in the capital. Several earlier attempts going back many years to fully or partially privatise distribution of water, especially the big loan application to the World Bank in 2005, were foiled by vigilant community organisations, public interest groups, trade unions and political...